[{"id":"1258","cataloger_name":["Mahtab,Banihashemi"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Henry Beissel and Mike Gnarowski at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 13 January 1967"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"Henry Beissel Reading in The Poetry Series at Sir George Williams University, 1967-01-13\" handwritten on the back of the tape's box. Spelling mistakes and Mike Gnarwoski's name scratched over with pen. \n\n\"I086-11-003\" and \"RT 516\" also written. \n\n\"GNAROWSKI & BISSEL I006/SR122\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. Gnarowski refers to Michael Gnarowski. Bissel refers to Henry Beissel. Biessel is mispelled "],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 1"],"item_identifiers":["[I086-11-003, I006-11-122]"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Gnarowski, Michael","Beissel, Henry"],"creator_names_search":["Gnarowski, Michael","Beissel, Henry"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/115582508\",\"name\":\"Gnarowski, Michael\",\"dates\":\"1934-\",\"notes\":\"Michael Gnarowski was born on September 27, 1934 in Shanghai, China. He attended several universities: McGill University, B.A. in 1956, Indiana University in 1959, University of Montreal, M.A. in 1960 and University of Ottawa, Ph.D. in 1967. While at McGill, he published his poetry in Yes, which he co-edited. Gnarowski was heavily involved in several presses and magazines throughout his career, which include Le Chien d’or/The Golden Dog, Delta, Golden Dog Press, the Tecumseh Press, Arc Poetry Magazine and McGraw-Hill Ryerson’s Critical Views on Canadian Writers Series (Ryerson Press, 1970), and Canadian Poetry. Along with Ron Everson, Raymond Souster and Louis Dudek, he founded the League of Canadian Poets in 1966. He taught English at the University of Sherbrooke from 1961-62; at Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay), Ontario from 1962-65; was an assistant professor of English at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) from 1966-72; Carleton University from 1972 onwards. He published a book of his own poetry, Postscript for St. James Street in 1965 (Delta Press), and has since edited and compiled over fifteen other books.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Performer\",\"Author\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/5489879\",\"name\":\"Beissel, Henry\",\"dates\":\"1929-\",\"notes\":\"Poet Henry Beissel was born in 1929 in Cologne, Germany. Beissel studied philosophy at universities in Cologne and in London before emigrating to Canada in 1951 where he graduated with an M.A. in English from the University of Toronto in 1960. He taught at the University of Edmonton, the University of Alberta as well as Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in Montreal. Beissel served as editor for the controversial literary and political journal Edge from 1963 (in Edmonton) until 1969 (in Montreal). He translated the poetry of German-Canadian Walter Bauer, called The Price of Morning in 1968 (Prism International Press). His first book, New Wings for Icarus was published in 1966 (Coach House Press), followed by Face on the Dark in 1970. Beissel later published The Salt I Taste (D.C. Books, 1975), The Cantos North (Penumbra Press, 1982), Season of Blood (Mosaic Press,1984), Poems new and selected (Grove Press, 1987), Across the Sun’s Warp (BuschekBooks, 2003). He later wrote and published several plays; Inook and the Sun was performed at the Stratford Festival in 1973. In 1980-1, Henry Beissel acted as President of the League of Canadian Poets.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Kiyooka, Roy","Dudek, Louis"],"contributors_names_search":["Kiyooka, Roy","Dudek, Louis"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/30784426\",\"name\":\"Kiyooka, Roy\",\"dates\":\"1926-1994\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/49240132\",\"name\":\"Dudek, Louis\",\"dates\":\"1918-2001\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Dudek, Louis"],"Series_organizer_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Speaker_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Performance_Date":[1967],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Excellent\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Kodak\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Excellent\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"Popped strands\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel","Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape","Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue","Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio","Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono","Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1967 1 13\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in The Georgian's \\\"Op-Ed\\\"\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in The Georgian's \\\"Op-Ed\\\"\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Basement Theatre"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Henry Beissel reads largely from New Wings for Icarus (Coach House Press, 1966). Mike Gnarowski reads from Postscript for St. James Street (Delta, 1965) and from other unknown sources."],"contents":["Henry_beissel_i086-11-003.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:00:00\nLadies and Gentleman, um, let's see, what am I going to say? [Audience laughter and applause]...Well, glad to see y’all here. So, Professor Louis Dudek []https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3261787] from McGill University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q201492] will introduce the two poets who’re reading this evening. \n\nAudience\n00:00:31\nApplause.\n\nLouis Dudek\n00:00:40\nI expected a longer introduction than that, it will be very fine. There are two kinds of readings that I like to attend very much, one kind is the sort that they're having tonight at McGill University, where a well-established poet who has been on the scene for forty or fifty years comes to read. Over there, it's A.J.M. Smith [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4647944] from Michigan State [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q270222], Canadian anthologist and well-known poet. With a poet like that, really makes no difference what he reads or how he reads it's just important to see him and even the tottering saint can perform miracles on occasions. The other kinds of poets I do like to hear very much are the sort that we'll hear tonight, Gnarowski and Beissel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1606507]. The McGill publicity department sent out a notice about A.J.M. Smith and described him as well-known Anthropologist of Canadian poetry. Actually, they corrected it in ink, they made the mistake twice though, probably a typist error. But they didn't know how correct they were, with the current scene in Canadian writing, there are primitive types around that are hard to classify and we need anthropologists...Well, Beissel and Gnarowski are not of this breed of poets who seem to have lost all sense of poetic organization or form, where you think that conventions, poetic conventions have been abolished and what is left are chaotic bits of internal monologue on the page. Of course, that kind of school may be very interesting to watch to see what comes out of it but at present, having watched it now for a few years I'm a little impatient often and tired of the magazines where this material occurs because it seems so easy to turn out and anyone has these bits of chaotic monologue going on. On the other hand, there are many poets still writing who are not following the conventional forms of English metrics and rhyme and so forth, who are turning out poems or at least watching what happens what happens with the words on the page and both the poets we're listening to tonight are of this kind. They are very careful craftsmen. Henry Beissel has the long list of achievements to his credits already, but two on that list strike me very much. One is, amongst many of the posts where he's taught, one is the University of Alberta [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q640694] is the kind of political stir that was created on the campus when his magazine Edge was brought into the classroom by one of the professors. That is, his poetry contains, content that can make one think, that is morally committed to certain issues in today's world. He's very strongly a moral poet on one side, and the other item in his biography is his new book which has just appeared New Wings for Icarus, which is extremely aesthetic at the same time that it is meaningful in this way. His poetry seems to combine two things, one is a moral urgency and on the other hand, at the same time, a romantic sense of language and of imagery and of emotion that goes with that, which are all very, very promising characteristics for a beginning poet, but I think that this New Wings for Icarus book is his first considerable book. So, without more ado, I introduce to you Henry Beissel. \n\nHenry Beissel\n00:05:30\nWhen I considered the kind of poems that I might read this evening and the order in which to read them, I was thinking of the condition of this hall, as it was the last time I was here and I therefore chose two poems which I wrote in the West Indies [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q669037]. [Audience laughter]. They celebrate the sun in an ambiguous sort of way, I'm going to read them all the same, despite the fact that the conditions have changed. I don't know how much you need to know about the West Indies, I'm hoping—oh.\n\nAudience Member 1\n00:06:15\nAddresses Beissel [unintelligible].\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:06:17\nIs this any better? Is there someone in the hall who can attend please to all this? \n\nAudience Member 2\n00:06:28\nAddresses Beissel [unintelligible].\n\nAudience\n00:06:30\nLaughter.\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:06:39\nWell I'll try to speak a little louder on my own, in spite of the microphone. I was saying that I don't know how much one needs to know of the West Indies to respond to this sort of poem, I'm hoping something of the West Indies might be in the poems, the first is called \"Pans at Carnival\". Pan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6610630] is the expression for a steel drum. The imagery in the poem is taken entirely from the steel drum and its use at Carnival [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4618], a feast that is about to be celebrated in Trinidad [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q754] in about a month. Rhythmically, the poem tries to catch something of the rhythm of the steel pan. \n\nHenry Beissel\n00:07:28\nReads \"Pans at Carnival\".\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:10:18\nThe second poem celebrates something of the violence that the sun, with which the sun blesses those parts of the world from which it never really disappears.\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:10:34\nReads \"Where the Sun Only\".\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:12:49\nNext I want to read two parts from New Wings for Icarus. Time does not allow me to read the whole poem, because then I could read you nothing else. “Icarus” is a poem that is written in four parts, it is with some regret that I read only two, because to me it is like playing the second and fourth part of a symphony, but there is no alternative. \n\nHenry Beissel\n00:13:19\nReads \"New Wings for Icarus\", part 2 from New Wings for Icarus.\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:13:51\nSorry, I'll start again. This is a hard one to read and this print is very small. I better hold it closer.\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:13:59\nReads \"New Wings for Icarus\", part 2 from New Wings for Icarus.\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:19:41\nReads \"New Wings for Icarus\", part 4 from New Wings for Icarus.\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:26:39\nNow for a little sort of relaxation in-between, I find unrelieved serious poetry hard to bear myself, I'll read—unfortunately I do not write occasional poems terribly often, they always seem to grow into something much bigger than I can handle, but the next two poems I want to read you are occasional poems, poetry can come out of anything of course, and this one came out of an encounter in a house of Inquisition in Cartagena [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q657461], in Colombia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q739], it is really self-explanatory. It's called \"En la Casa de Inquisición\". \n\nHenry Beissel\n00:27:40\nReads \"En la Casa de Inquisición\".\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:29:23\nThe next poem leads me on to the last set of poems, but you won't discover that until you hear the last two poems. This poem is dedicated to my daughter, when she was 1 and a half, the first stanza deals with the circumstances of her birth, which were somewhat elaborate, there were firemen. The second stanza deals with her present—this would be the past from the time of the poem, the second deals with her present, and the third with her future. \n\nHenry Beissel\n00:30:07\nReads \"To My Daughter at Age 1 1/2\".\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:33:25\nAnd now I come to the final two poems. They belong together and are part of a— we agreed not to torture you and not to read for more than 30 minutes this evening and I am trying to stick to that. This is rather the beginning of something that I may never live to finish, the entire thing is supposed to have some 26 poems, of which you will hear the first two, one is a prologue and the other one is called \"Adam Enter Eve\". In the prologue, a character introduces himself who is to play his part in the rest of the poem. It's not really a dramatic poem, although it's, well I don't think of it as a drama, although it has dramatic qualities. Anyway, I don't like to be my own critic. I prefer just to read you the poem. The whole cycle will be called \"The Dancer from the Dance\" that is as you no doubt know, a quotation from Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213]. \n\nHenry Beissel\n00:34:45\nReads \"Prologue\" from \"The Dancer from the Dance\".\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:37:04\nReads \"Adam Enter Eve\".\n\nEND\n00:49:40\n[Recording continues on mike_gnarowski_i006-11-122.mp3].\n\nmike_gnarowski_i006-11-122.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\n\nLouis Dudek\n00:00:00\nStrongly I was impressed and moved by that reading by Henry Beissel. Really several times after the poems I wanted to applaud, only we don't do that. They were magnificently organized forms with powerful language and very well read, I felt, I think I'm speaking for most people here when I say that. Mike Gnarowski who reads next is different perhaps in the extent to which his poetry is oriented towards reality. Not by implication because Beissel's also is very real and very down to earth and very much committed to the real world, but Gnarowski's poetry has a lot to do with Canadian poetry and the way it has turned towards the real world since about 1925 since A.J.M. Smith and Scott [F.R. Scott; https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3081656] and A.M. Klein [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2778027] began writing. Gnarowski's been very active as a student of Canadian literature, a scholar and a bibliographer and so forth of our literature looking into the sources of this modern poetry and to letters and documents. In this he has done some very valuable work, indexing little magazines that would be otherwise, less well known, preparing bibliographies and he is now working on a larger anthology of criticism introducing the backgrounds of modern Canadian poetry. All this kind of study which is very valuable on the academic side is also important to his poetry I feel, that it places him within the line of modern Canadian poets who have tried to interpret the real, the visible, the actual, directly in poetry. Somewhat in the way I suppose that all modern poetry in English does, including T.S. Eliot's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37767] \"Waste Land\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q581458] and Ezra Pound's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q163366] \"Cantos\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2701465] and e. e. cumming's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q298703] comedies and satires and Auden's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178698] poetry also. That is the characteristic of twentieth-century poetry is that its extreme realism and the bringing of the romantic conceptions of the last century to bear upon the actual world and showing that the conflict, the intense conflict that exists in the poet between his conception of things and what he sees before him. That you find in Gnarowski very much. He as a writer he is a meticulous craftsman, I don't know if that's symbolic [audience laughter]... He's also a meticulous craftsman and his poems seem to grow by accretion, very gradually. He writes with a stubborn integrity and knows what he thinks and what he's trying to say in a poem, they aren't just momentary fusions. They're highly worked up pieces of writing. There's a strong element of rationality and reality in this poetry, less of the flight of the emotions and the fantasy that's in most other poets. There's a very strong formal organization in his poetry, a clean speech, straight as the Greeks as Ezra Pound used to say in the past. His first book is entitled Postscript for St. James Street which has to do with, in some part anyhow, with the business world in which we live and he has chosen that quite consciously as a subject that could be turned into poetry, to take the business man, the real in that sense, St. James Street [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1526237] and see what can be made out of that imaginatively. Most poets when they treat a subject like that turn it into satire, because what else can you make out of St. James Street, but Gnarowski wants to keep his vision clear and straight for the fact to see what it really is without elevating too much or perhaps without caricaturing the reality, and it's a very interesting experiment. I'm sure you'll all enjoy listening to his poetry.\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:05:09\nA couple of years ago I had the occasion to go up into North Western Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904], and I lived there for three or four years and more specifically on Port Arthur [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7230482] which is on the very shores of Lake Superior [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1066], and I kept looking at this magnificent and fantastic lake and it kept bothering me. It was too big and too vast and too meaningful and too ominous in many ways to be let off too easily. I also had a friend up there who was an anthropologist and archaeologist and a very good one, and he spent a lot of time going up into that country up around Lake Superior and he kept coming back with all sorts of wonderful thing, all sorts of relics of the past as it were. Gaffs and skulls and this and that which he kept finding and he told me that that part of the world had at one time had supported a pretty fantastic civilization of its own, a very peculiar civilization. And I looked at the lake, Lake Superior, and I decided I would try to write something about it, about the feelings that I think that this ominous body of water might have. A little poem I did for it is entitled \"Great Sea\".\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:06:30\nReads \"Great Sea\".\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:10:40\nAnd following along the same themes, a little poem entitled \"Amethyst Harbour\" which was occasioned by a visit of A.Y. Jackson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3499926] and several friends who gathered in this quite magnificent place on the lake, just about this time of the year and you could look out across Thunder Bay [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9298873] and you saw nothing but ice-locked island and of course snow and ice continuing forever and ever. I always felt the nature, of course, there had not been overcome by man and that nature always threatened man and that there was a struggle, a conflict, a tension going on. So here is \"Amethyst Harbour\".\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:11:31\nReads \"Amethyst Harbour\".\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:13:20\nAs Louis Dudek pointed out, I've always been fascinated by those men who wheel and deal and who are responsible for much of the life of the nation, I suppose, of North America [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49], the so-called businessman, much maligned most of the time. I normally try to deal as properly as I can and in this instance I think I'm probably being unkind. This is a poem entitled \"Portrait of a Man Come to Say Farewell\".\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:13:55\nReads \"Portrait of a Man Come to Say Farewell\".\n\nAudience\n00:15:26\nApplause [one person].\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:15:30\nUhh--Thank you. A little while ago, or a few years ago I should say, I had the occasion to go to a town south-east of here called Victoriaville [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q141731], I was there on business and I went through an old-age or an old-people's home and some of you may know what those places are like, I was profoundly affected by this experience and I tried to write something about it and I've called this little thing \"Provincia Nostra\".\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:15:56\nReads \"Provincia Nostra”.\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:16:50\nThis is for a friend who was lost in an automobile accident.\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:16:54\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:17:31\nA very short thing, which I think fills the purpose of keeping me from becoming too serious.\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:17:46\nReads unnamed poem. \n\nMike Gnarowski\n00:17:59\nThank you.\n \nAudience\n00:18:00\nLaughter and applause [cut off].\n\nIntroducer\n00:18:03\nWe'd like to express our thanks to Mike Gnarowski, Henry Beissel, and our special appreciation to Louis Dudek who made the supreme sacrifice of tearing himself away from McGill to come here and introduce them. [Audience applause]. Our next reading will be in two weeks, on Friday, January 27 Margaret Avison [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6759152] will be coming from Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172] to read her poetry and the following reading on Sat. Feb. 11, Paul Blackburn [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7149388] who is the Poet in Residence at the City College in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1093910] and the author of, among other things, Brooklyn, Manhattan Transit will be coming here to read his poetry. Thank you.\n \nEND\n00:19:00\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-specific Information:\\n\\nHenry Beissel was teaching at Sir George Williams University in 1966. He also edited Edge: An Independent Periodical, no. 6, Spring 1967.\\n\\nMike Gnarowski received his Ph.D. from University of Ottawa in 1967, and was working as an associate professor at Sir George Williams University. He co-edited The Making of Modern Poetry in Canada with Louis Dudek, which was published by Ryerson Press in 1967. He was the editor of Yes magazine from 1956-69.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local connections:\\n\\nBeissel retired as Distinguished Emeritus Professor of English from Concordia University in 1996. Henry Beissel, Mike Gnarowski and Louis Dudek (also in this reading) organized the Montreal Committee, and organized The Emergency Symposium on the Americanization of Canadian Universities in May of 1969.\\n\\nMike Gnarowski is very involved in the effort to promote Canadian authors and writers, editing and publishing criticism and anthologies of Canadian poetry, specifically those of Leonard Cohen, Archibald Lampman and Raymond Knister as well as little known writers.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Faith Paré (2020) and Ali Barillaro (2021)\\n\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"2 reel-to-reel tapes>2 CDs>2 digital files\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/new-wings-for-icarus-a-poem-in-four-parts/oclc/1127807997&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Beissel, Henry. New Wings for Icarus. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1966. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/canadianization-movement-emergence-survival-and-success/oclc/1165482183&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Cormier, Jeffrey. The Canadianization movement: emergence, survival and success. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.lac-bac.gc.ca/archiveslitteraires/027011-200.058-e.html\",\"citation\":\"“Gnarowski, Michael 1934-”. Michael Gnarowski fonds 1956-1985. Library and Archives       \\t\\nCanada\\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/postscript-for-st-james-street/oclc/2566553&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Gnarowski, Michael. Postscript for St. James Street. Montreal: Delta, 1965. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/mike-gnarowski-at-sgwu-1967-louis-dudek/\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings Resume Tonight with Beissel and Gnarowski”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 13 January 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=O5UtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4p8FAAAAIBAJ&pg=3951,6182119&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Series Coming Up At University”. Montreal: The Gazette. 31 December 1966, page 39. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/mike-gnarowski-at-sgwu-1967-louis-dudek/\",\"citation\":\"Simco, Bob. “Georgiantics”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 9 January 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/865265719&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Stevens, Peter. \\\"Beissel, Henry\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, 2nd edition. \\nEugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, 2006. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/mike-gnarowski-at-sgwu-1967-louis-dudek/\",\"citation\":\"Thoms, Kathleen. “Professor Poets With Urgency and Imagery”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, January 1967.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/86526\",\"citation\":\"Toye, William. \\\"League of Canadian Poets, The\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian \\nLiterature, 2nd edition. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, \\n2006. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Michael Gnarowski.\\\" Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548668678144,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.264Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0122_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0122_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Mike Gnarowski Tape Box 1 - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0122_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0122_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Mike Gnarowski Tape Box 1 - 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Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/mike_gnarowski_i006-11-122.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"mike_gnarowski_i006-11-122.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:19:00\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"45.6 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"mike_gnarowski_i006-11-122.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\\n\\nLouis Dudek\\n00:00:00\\nStrongly I was impressed and moved by that reading by Henry Beissel. Really several times after the poems I wanted to applaud, only we don't do that. They were magnificently organized forms with powerful language and very well read, I felt, I think I'm speaking for most people here when I say that. Mike Gnarowski who reads next is different perhaps in the extent to which his poetry is oriented towards reality. Not by implication because Beissel's also is very real and very down to earth and very much committed to the real world, but Gnarowski's poetry has a lot to do with Canadian poetry and the way it has turned towards the real world since about 1925 since A.J.M. Smith and Scott [F.R. Scott; https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3081656] and A.M. Klein [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2778027] began writing. Gnarowski's been very active as a student of Canadian literature, a scholar and a bibliographer and so forth of our literature looking into the sources of this modern poetry and to letters and documents. In this he has done some very valuable work, indexing little magazines that would be otherwise, less well known, preparing bibliographies and he is now working on a larger anthology of criticism introducing the backgrounds of modern Canadian poetry. All this kind of study which is very valuable on the academic side is also important to his poetry I feel, that it places him within the line of modern Canadian poets who have tried to interpret the real, the visible, the actual, directly in poetry. Somewhat in the way I suppose that all modern poetry in English does, including T.S. Eliot's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37767] \\\"Waste Land\\\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q581458] and Ezra Pound's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q163366] \\\"Cantos\\\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2701465] and e. e. cumming's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q298703] comedies and satires and Auden's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178698] poetry also. That is the characteristic of twentieth-century poetry is that its extreme realism and the bringing of the romantic conceptions of the last century to bear upon the actual world and showing that the conflict, the intense conflict that exists in the poet between his conception of things and what he sees before him. That you find in Gnarowski very much. He as a writer he is a meticulous craftsman, I don't know if that's symbolic [audience laughter]... He's also a meticulous craftsman and his poems seem to grow by accretion, very gradually. He writes with a stubborn integrity and knows what he thinks and what he's trying to say in a poem, they aren't just momentary fusions. They're highly worked up pieces of writing. There's a strong element of rationality and reality in this poetry, less of the flight of the emotions and the fantasy that's in most other poets. There's a very strong formal organization in his poetry, a clean speech, straight as the Greeks as Ezra Pound used to say in the past. His first book is entitled Postscript for St. James Street which has to do with, in some part anyhow, with the business world in which we live and he has chosen that quite consciously as a subject that could be turned into poetry, to take the business man, the real in that sense, St. James Street [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1526237] and see what can be made out of that imaginatively. Most poets when they treat a subject like that turn it into satire, because what else can you make out of St. James Street, but Gnarowski wants to keep his vision clear and straight for the fact to see what it really is without elevating too much or perhaps without caricaturing the reality, and it's a very interesting experiment. I'm sure you'll all enjoy listening to his poetry.\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:05:09\\nA couple of years ago I had the occasion to go up into North Western Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904], and I lived there for three or four years and more specifically on Port Arthur [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7230482] which is on the very shores of Lake Superior [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1066], and I kept looking at this magnificent and fantastic lake and it kept bothering me. It was too big and too vast and too meaningful and too ominous in many ways to be let off too easily. I also had a friend up there who was an anthropologist and archaeologist and a very good one, and he spent a lot of time going up into that country up around Lake Superior and he kept coming back with all sorts of wonderful thing, all sorts of relics of the past as it were. Gaffs and skulls and this and that which he kept finding and he told me that that part of the world had at one time had supported a pretty fantastic civilization of its own, a very peculiar civilization. And I looked at the lake, Lake Superior, and I decided I would try to write something about it, about the feelings that I think that this ominous body of water might have. A little poem I did for it is entitled \\\"Great Sea\\\".\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:06:30\\nReads \\\"Great Sea\\\".\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:10:40\\nAnd following along the same themes, a little poem entitled \\\"Amethyst Harbour\\\" which was occasioned by a visit of A.Y. Jackson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3499926] and several friends who gathered in this quite magnificent place on the lake, just about this time of the year and you could look out across Thunder Bay [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9298873] and you saw nothing but ice-locked island and of course snow and ice continuing forever and ever. I always felt the nature, of course, there had not been overcome by man and that nature always threatened man and that there was a struggle, a conflict, a tension going on. So here is \\\"Amethyst Harbour\\\".\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:11:31\\nReads \\\"Amethyst Harbour\\\".\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:13:20\\nAs Louis Dudek pointed out, I've always been fascinated by those men who wheel and deal and who are responsible for much of the life of the nation, I suppose, of North America [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49], the so-called businessman, much maligned most of the time. I normally try to deal as properly as I can and in this instance I think I'm probably being unkind. This is a poem entitled \\\"Portrait of a Man Come to Say Farewell\\\".\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:13:55\\nReads \\\"Portrait of a Man Come to Say Farewell\\\".\\n\\nAudience\\n00:15:26\\nApplause [one person].\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:15:30\\nUhh--Thank you. A little while ago, or a few years ago I should say, I had the occasion to go to a town south-east of here called Victoriaville [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q141731], I was there on business and I went through an old-age or an old-people's home and some of you may know what those places are like, I was profoundly affected by this experience and I tried to write something about it and I've called this little thing \\\"Provincia Nostra\\\".\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:15:56\\nReads \\\"Provincia Nostra”.\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:16:50\\nThis is for a friend who was lost in an automobile accident.\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:16:54\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:17:31\\nA very short thing, which I think fills the purpose of keeping me from becoming too serious.\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:17:46\\nReads unnamed poem. \\n\\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:17:59\\nThank you.\\n \\nAudience\\n00:18:00\\nLaughter and applause [cut off].\\n\\nIntroducer\\n00:18:03\\nWe'd like to express our thanks to Mike Gnarowski, Henry Beissel, and our special appreciation to Louis Dudek who made the supreme sacrifice of tearing himself away from McGill to come here and introduce them. [Audience applause]. Our next reading will be in two weeks, on Friday, January 27 Margaret Avison [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6759152] will be coming from Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172] to read her poetry and the following reading on Sat. Feb. 11, Paul Blackburn [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7149388] who is the Poet in Residence at the City College in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1093910] and the author of, among other things, Brooklyn, Manhattan Transit will be coming here to read his poetry. Thank you.\\n \\nEND\\n00:19:00\\n\",\"notes\":\" Mike Gnarowski reads from Postscript for St. James Street (Delta, 1965) and from other unknown sources.\\n\\n00:00 - Introduction by Louis Dudek [INDEX: Henry Beissel’s reading, realism in poetry, Canadian poetry since 1925, A.J.M. Smith, F.R. Scott, A.M. Klein, bibliographer, indexing smaller magazines, T.S. Eliot’s “Wastel Land”, Ezra Pound’s “Cantos”, e e cumming’s satires and comedies, W.H. Auden, romantic conceptions of 19th century vs. extreme realism of 20th century, Postscript for St. James Street by Gnarowski]\\n05:09 - Mike Gnarowski introduces “Great Sea” [INDEX: North Western Ontario, Port Arthur, Lake Superior, archaeological artifacts]\\n06:30 - Reads “Great Sea”\\n10:40 - Introduces “Amethyst Harbour” [INDEX: A.Y. Jackson, Thunder Bay, man vs. nature]\\n11:31 - Reads “Amethyst Harbour”\\n13:20 - Introduces “Portrait of a Man Come to Say Farewell” \\n13:55 - Reads “Portrait of a Man Come to Say Farewell”\\n15:30 - Introduces “Provincia Nostra” [INDEX: Victoriaville]\\n15:56 - Reads “Provincia Nostra”\\n16:50 - Introduces first line “For some inimitable action...”\\n16:54 - Reads first line “For some inimitable action...”\\n17:31 - Introduces first line “If I had legs like yours...”\\n17:46 - Reads first line “If I had legs like yours...”\\n18:03 - Introducer (unknown) says thank-you’s. [INDEX: Mike Gnarowski, Henry Beissel, Louis Dudek, McGill, Margaret Avison, Paul Blackburn]\\n19:00 - END OF EVENT.\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/henry-beissel-reads-with-introduction-by-louis-dudek-michael-gnarowski-in-same-reading/\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/henry_beissel_i086-11-003.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"henry_beissel_i086-11-003.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:49:40\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"119.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Henry_beissel_i086-11-003.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\\n\\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:00:00\\nLadies and Gentleman, um, let's see, what am I going to say? [Audience laughter and applause]...Well, glad to see y’all here. So, Professor Louis Dudek []https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3261787] from McGill University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q201492] will introduce the two poets who’re reading this evening. \\n\\nAudience\\n00:00:31\\nApplause.\\n\\nLouis Dudek\\n00:00:40\\nI expected a longer introduction than that, it will be very fine. There are two kinds of readings that I like to attend very much, one kind is the sort that they're having tonight at McGill University, where a well-established poet who has been on the scene for forty or fifty years comes to read. Over there, it's A.J.M. Smith [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4647944] from Michigan State [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q270222], Canadian anthologist and well-known poet. With a poet like that, really makes no difference what he reads or how he reads it's just important to see him and even the tottering saint can perform miracles on occasions. The other kinds of poets I do like to hear very much are the sort that we'll hear tonight, Gnarowski and Beissel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1606507]. The McGill publicity department sent out a notice about A.J.M. Smith and described him as well-known Anthropologist of Canadian poetry. Actually, they corrected it in ink, they made the mistake twice though, probably a typist error. But they didn't know how correct they were, with the current scene in Canadian writing, there are primitive types around that are hard to classify and we need anthropologists...Well, Beissel and Gnarowski are not of this breed of poets who seem to have lost all sense of poetic organization or form, where you think that conventions, poetic conventions have been abolished and what is left are chaotic bits of internal monologue on the page. Of course, that kind of school may be very interesting to watch to see what comes out of it but at present, having watched it now for a few years I'm a little impatient often and tired of the magazines where this material occurs because it seems so easy to turn out and anyone has these bits of chaotic monologue going on. On the other hand, there are many poets still writing who are not following the conventional forms of English metrics and rhyme and so forth, who are turning out poems or at least watching what happens what happens with the words on the page and both the poets we're listening to tonight are of this kind. They are very careful craftsmen. Henry Beissel has the long list of achievements to his credits already, but two on that list strike me very much. One is, amongst many of the posts where he's taught, one is the University of Alberta [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q640694] is the kind of political stir that was created on the campus when his magazine Edge was brought into the classroom by one of the professors. That is, his poetry contains, content that can make one think, that is morally committed to certain issues in today's world. He's very strongly a moral poet on one side, and the other item in his biography is his new book which has just appeared New Wings for Icarus, which is extremely aesthetic at the same time that it is meaningful in this way. His poetry seems to combine two things, one is a moral urgency and on the other hand, at the same time, a romantic sense of language and of imagery and of emotion that goes with that, which are all very, very promising characteristics for a beginning poet, but I think that this New Wings for Icarus book is his first considerable book. So, without more ado, I introduce to you Henry Beissel. \\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:05:30\\nWhen I considered the kind of poems that I might read this evening and the order in which to read them, I was thinking of the condition of this hall, as it was the last time I was here and I therefore chose two poems which I wrote in the West Indies [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q669037]. [Audience laughter]. They celebrate the sun in an ambiguous sort of way, I'm going to read them all the same, despite the fact that the conditions have changed. I don't know how much you need to know about the West Indies, I'm hoping—oh.\\n\\nAudience Member 1\\n00:06:15\\nAddresses Beissel [unintelligible].\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:06:17\\nIs this any better? Is there someone in the hall who can attend please to all this? \\n\\nAudience Member 2\\n00:06:28\\nAddresses Beissel [unintelligible].\\n\\nAudience\\n00:06:30\\nLaughter.\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:06:39\\nWell I'll try to speak a little louder on my own, in spite of the microphone. I was saying that I don't know how much one needs to know of the West Indies to respond to this sort of poem, I'm hoping something of the West Indies might be in the poems, the first is called \\\"Pans at Carnival\\\". Pan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6610630] is the expression for a steel drum. The imagery in the poem is taken entirely from the steel drum and its use at Carnival [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4618], a feast that is about to be celebrated in Trinidad [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q754] in about a month. Rhythmically, the poem tries to catch something of the rhythm of the steel pan. \\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:07:28\\nReads \\\"Pans at Carnival\\\".\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:10:18\\nThe second poem celebrates something of the violence that the sun, with which the sun blesses those parts of the world from which it never really disappears.\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:10:34\\nReads \\\"Where the Sun Only\\\".\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:12:49\\nNext I want to read two parts from New Wings for Icarus. Time does not allow me to read the whole poem, because then I could read you nothing else. “Icarus” is a poem that is written in four parts, it is with some regret that I read only two, because to me it is like playing the second and fourth part of a symphony, but there is no alternative. \\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:13:19\\nReads \\\"New Wings for Icarus\\\", part 2 from New Wings for Icarus.\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:13:51\\nSorry, I'll start again. This is a hard one to read and this print is very small. I better hold it closer.\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:13:59\\nReads \\\"New Wings for Icarus\\\", part 2 from New Wings for Icarus.\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:19:41\\nReads \\\"New Wings for Icarus\\\", part 4 from New Wings for Icarus.\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:26:39\\nNow for a little sort of relaxation in-between, I find unrelieved serious poetry hard to bear myself, I'll read—unfortunately I do not write occasional poems terribly often, they always seem to grow into something much bigger than I can handle, but the next two poems I want to read you are occasional poems, poetry can come out of anything of course, and this one came out of an encounter in a house of Inquisition in Cartagena [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q657461], in Colombia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q739], it is really self-explanatory. It's called \\\"En la Casa de Inquisición\\\". \\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:27:40\\nReads \\\"En la Casa de Inquisición\\\".\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:29:23\\nThe next poem leads me on to the last set of poems, but you won't discover that until you hear the last two poems. This poem is dedicated to my daughter, when she was 1 and a half, the first stanza deals with the circumstances of her birth, which were somewhat elaborate, there were firemen. The second stanza deals with her present—this would be the past from the time of the poem, the second deals with her present, and the third with her future. \\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:30:07\\nReads \\\"To My Daughter at Age 1 1/2\\\".\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:33:25\\nAnd now I come to the final two poems. They belong together and are part of a— we agreed not to torture you and not to read for more than 30 minutes this evening and I am trying to stick to that. This is rather the beginning of something that I may never live to finish, the entire thing is supposed to have some 26 poems, of which you will hear the first two, one is a prologue and the other one is called \\\"Adam Enter Eve\\\". In the prologue, a character introduces himself who is to play his part in the rest of the poem. It's not really a dramatic poem, although it's, well I don't think of it as a drama, although it has dramatic qualities. Anyway, I don't like to be my own critic. I prefer just to read you the poem. The whole cycle will be called \\\"The Dancer from the Dance\\\" that is as you no doubt know, a quotation from Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213]. \\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:34:45\\nReads \\\"Prologue\\\" from \\\"The Dancer from the Dance\\\".\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:37:04\\nReads \\\"Adam Enter Eve\\\".\\n\\nEND\\n00:49:40\\n[Recording continues on mike_gnarowski_i006-11-122.mp3].\\n\",\"notes\":\"Henry Beissel reads largely from New Wings for Icarus (Coach House Press, 1966).\\n\\n00:00 - Unknown speaker introduces Louis Dudek [INDEX: McGill University, Louis Dudek]\\n00:40 - Louis Dudek introduces Henry Beissel [INDEX: A.J.M. Smith from Michigan State as Canadian Anthropologist of poetry, Mike Gnarowski, poetic organization and conventions, new schools of poetry, ‘chaotic monologue’, English metrics and rhyme, University of Alberta, Edge Magazine, New Wings for Icarus]\\n05:30 - Henry Beissel speaks [INDEX: West Indies]\\n06:39 - Henry Beissel introduces “Pans at Carnival” [INDEX: imagery of a steel drum, Trinidad]\\n07:28 - Reads “Pans at Carnival”\\n10:18 - Introduces “Where the Sun Only” [INDEX: imagery of the sun]\\n10:34 - Reads “Where the Sun Only”\\n12:49 - Introduces “New Wings for Icarus”, part 2 [INDEX: Icarus]\\n13:51 - Re-starts poem\\n19:41 - Reads “New Wings for Icarus”, part 4\\n26:39 - Introduces “En la Casa de Inquisition” [INDEX: occasional poetry, Cartagena, Columbia]\\n27:40 - Reads “En la Casa de Inquisition”\\n29:23 - Introduces “To my Daughter at Age 1 1/2” [INDEX: poem for his daughter]\\n30:07 - Reads “To my Daughter at Age 1 1/2”\\n33:25 - Introduces “Prologue” and “Adam Enter Eve” from “The Dancer from the Dance” [INDEX: Yeats]\\n34:45 - Reads “Prologue”\\n37:04 - Reads “Adam Enter Eve”\\n49:40 - END OF RECORDING.\\n\\nHoward Fink List of Poems:\\n“Henry Beissel”\\nJanuary 13, 1967\\nwith reel information\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/henry-beissel-reads-with-introduction-by-louis-dudek-michael-gnarowski-in-same-reading/\"}]"],"score":2.4686255},{"id":"1259","cataloger_name":["Mahtab,Banihashemi"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Margaret Avison at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 27 January 1967"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"Marg. Avison (2 tracks 3 3/4\"/sec ) I086-11-002\" written on sticker on the reel and on the tape's box. Marg. Avison refers to Margaret Avison. \"RT 518\" also written."],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 1"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Avison, Margaret"],"creator_names_search":["Avison, Margaret"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\" http://viaf.org/viaf/79128508\",\"name\":\"Avison, Margaret\",\"dates\":\"1918-2007\",\"notes\":\"Poet Margaret Avison was born in Galt, Ontario in 1918. She was educated at the University of Toronto and received her Bachelor’s degree in 1940. During the early forties, she contributed her poetry to Sid Corman’s Origin, with the likes of Charles Olson, Denise Levertov and Robert Creeley. While she is often associated with this group of poets, her content differs from theirs. Avison worked as an English literature lecturer, a secretary, a librarian, a researcher and as a social worker at a mission in downtown Toronto. Her first collection of poems was published in 1960, titled Winter Sun (University of Toronto Press), followed by The Dumbfounding (Noron, 1966). Avison’s poetry was also anthologized in Eli Mandel and Jean-Guy Pilon’s Poetry 62 (Ryerson, 1961). In 1963, she returned to the University of Toronto to write her thesis on Don Juan and to pursue graduate work. Avison taught and lectured English at Scarborough College and at the University of Toronto, as well as working at the Presbyterian Church Mission in Toronto. In 1970, she collaborated with bp Nichol and published The Cosmic Chef Glee & Perloo Memorial Society under the direction of Captain Poetry presents...: [an evening of concrete, courtesy of Oberon Cement Works] (Oberon Press). Avison, staying on the periphery of the poetry scene, attended and participated in several readings, and supported other writers in their pursuits. She translated poems from Hungarian, which appear in The Plough and the Pen: Writings from Hungary, 1930-1956 (London, P. Owen, 1963). Sunblue was published in 1978 by Lancelot Press, and a collected edition of Winter Sun/The Dumbfounding: Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland & Stewart, 1982) and No time (Lancelot Press, 1989). Her Selected Poems was published in 1991 by Oxford University Press, followed by A kind of perseverance (Lancelot Press, 1994) and Not yet but still (Lancelot Press, 1997). Avison has produced a number of books, Always Now: The collected poems (Porcupine’s Quill) came as a three volume series published between 2003 and 2005. Momentary dark (McClelland & Stewart, 2006), Listening: the last poems (McClelland & Stewart, 2009) and I am here and not not-there: an autobiography (Porcupine’s Quill, 2009) have both recently been released. Margaret Avison died in Toronto in August of 2007.\\n\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Performer\",\"Author\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"contributors_names_search":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/30784426\",\"name\":\"Kiyooka, Roy\",\"dates\":\"1926-1994\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Series_organizer_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Performance_Date":[1967],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"BASF\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Excellent\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"01:20:00\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1967 1 27\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in The Georgian's \\\"Op-Ed\\\"\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in The Georgian's \\\"Op-Ed\\\"\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Basement Theatre"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"contents":["margaret_avison_i086-11-002.mp3\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:00:00\nIn view of the embarrassment of having made such a mess of introducing the last poet, I spent a considerable amount of time setting out what I should say this evening, so hopefully I'll be a little more successful. Well, this is our seventh poetry evening and we welcome you all here this cold and blustery evening. Now, this evening we're having Margaret Avison [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6759152] read poems, and I wanted to say a few things about her. I first listened to Margaret read her poems at the poetry conference, University of British Columbia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q391028], during the summer of 1963. Her reading, together with those of the other poets on hand, are among the most memorable occasions I've had in my love affair with poems and poets. Four years later, in early January, we spent an afternoon together. Now I don't want to attribute, what I felt with a thought, on Bloor Street, to our conversation, but the warmth of it was very real. Margaret Avison was born in Guelph [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q504114], Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904]; some early years were spent in Alberta [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1951]; she graduated from Victoria College [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3551503], the University of Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q180865], in 1940, with a BA in English Language and Literature. She has been a secretary of all sorts for various firms, individuals, and organizations, and has also been a research assistant and librarian and presently teaches English at Scarborough College, Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172]. 1956-57 she was a Guggenheim Fellow [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P6594] in poetry, and during the forties her work appeared in various Canadian magazines, and in the fifties, mainly in American ones. She has published two books of poems; The Winter Sun in 1960 won the Governor General's Award [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q283256], and in 1966, W.W. Norton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1282208] in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] issued The Dumbfounding [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q42189162], her latest book. Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure in introducing to you Margaret Avison.\n \nUnknown\n00:02:59\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:02:59\nI don't know about the reading but I do know about the pleasure of meeting Roy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789] again here, and being introduced by him. If this were Monday, or up to a week from tonight, I would be able to join the Angry Art Week. I don't know if anybody else has received these letters, but in New York City initially they're trying this and anybody who gets a letter from them is asked to dedicate any reading or event to what they're trying to do. You can still send them money, too, I'll give you the address if you want it later. What they're going to do is play harps in railroad stations and have...lets see, Bach [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1339] cantatas in railroad stations, play-ins in various museums and the lobbies of concert halls, recital halls, business buildings--I like that one--dramatic presentations in laundromats and supermarkets, [audience laughter], a paint-in, and fences and billboards throughout Manhattan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11299] with their work showing and so on. This is a series. \"What we're trying to do is through art to reach the American people as human beings.\" So...[audience laughter]. If this were Monday I'd dedicate the reading [audience laughter and applause]...This is all very orderly, although it doesn't look it, and it starts with other people's poems of various kinds. A little section of C. Bukowski [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q76409], somebody said that's Charles, an American poet. It's a great long thing that was in a mimeograph magazine, and the description is of a woman with a bicycle and a baby carriage, high-heeled shoes, white socks, and all her belongings, on a hot day in the middle of a road in a city. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:05:28\nReads unnamed poem by Charles Bukowski.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:06:30.\nThat's sad, so on the same page I copied one of Al Fowler's, which was in a magazine called Lines, which is the all-time happiest little poem, and I don't know why. I'm going to stop where the lines stop, not where the sense stops, so you can see the shape of it.  There's no capital letters. There's no title.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:07:01\nReads “Are you a root or a tendermint” by Al Fowler [published in Lines 6].\n\nAudience \n00:07:20\nLaughter.\n\nMargaret Avison\n00:07:30\nThis is one by Gerry Gilbert [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5552756], called \"Zoo\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:07:39\nReads \"Zoo\" by Gerry Gilbert.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:08:00\nI may bring in some more of other people's, but this is just a little, it's a friend of mine in Toronto who's made it to grade seven this year. He calls it \"The Delinquent\", and he has, in this copy he has said that it's his copyright so if you betray the fact that I read some of it, I'll be in trouble with him.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:08:33\nReads \"The Delinquent\" by an unnamed author [audience laughter throughout].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:10:20\nIt goes on, a bit, I want to go back to where it gets sad, though. I love \"She twisted her pinkies behind her but all the knots held more\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:10:30\nResumes reading \"The Delinquent\" [audience laughter throughout].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:11:33\nThere's an awful line in the next verse. [Audience laughter].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:11:41\nResumes reading \"The Delinquent\" [audience laughter throughout].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:12:43\nIt ends up with knotting a burning matchstick into her old man's hair. [Audience laughter]. I think as he goes on he'll be somebody. If I'm not reading mine I'll warn of you. Some of these...the first one is a Toronto poem with footnotes, saying that TTC [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17978] means Toronto Transit Commission, and the Ditch is an open cut on the Yonge subway between Bloor and Rosedale. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:13:38\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:14:37\nThe second subway poem...a little child, it's called \"Subway Station Why Not.\"\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:14:53\nReads \"Subway Station Why Not\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:15:56\nThis next one is St. Clair Avenue, where I live on the car tracks. It's called \"Insomniac Report\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:16:11\nReads \"Insomniac Report\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:17:07\nFeels as if I should be doing something different, but I don't know what. I did a poem to people writing examinations I'm hunting for, but I think I've forgotten it. There's three about this odd experience of teaching and students. This one was written before I had had the experience, but was looking forward to it. And it had the title \"Is That You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?\" And it's very full of fine theory and idealism.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:18:18\nReads \"Is That You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:19:21\nAnd I've got two other incomplete ones that should be read with that. I'll just read two stanzas of the first one, it's got one four-line stanza for the students...\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:19:36\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:20:36\nThe teacher's answer hasn't got written yet. Here's another bit, two stanzas, the student and the teacher, that isn't finished. The student is talking although it doesn't sound like it. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:21:01\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:21:51\nThere's a daybreak bus I have to catch and this one is called \"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:22:03\nReads \"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:23:07\nI had planned to get all this organized on the plane, but I was in the middle of the three seats and I kept getting the briefcase out and everything would fall to the floor, and this one would dive for it, or this one, and I finally gave up, so it's upside down. This is dedicated to Jacques Ellul [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q322922], The Technological Society [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1607727], a book he wrote that's a little mad but very stirring.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:23:56\nReads [“Making Senses”, published later in No Time]. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:26:39\nThere's one here that is just the equivalent to sketching, I guess. I know a poet in Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297] who used to go and sit around in the Art Institute [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q239303], when it was a fairly quiet room, and stare all morning, and if any words occurred to him, he dashed them down. And sometime he worked up his sketches and sometime he didn't, which is a technique that's lots of fun to practice, and occasionally something grows out of it. In this case I don't think I'll ever do anything but it'll show you the kind of thing that I mean, if, as I assume, most of you are writers.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:27:38\nReads unnamed poem. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:28:25\nNow a poem with syntax and stuff called \"The Seven Birds\". A corner of Bathurst and College Street in Toronto which is the kind of buildings that have been there since the first world war, where there's often stores on the street level and an apartment or two above. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:29:01\nReads \"The Seven Birds\" [published later in sunblue].\n\nMargaret Avison\n00:30:15\nI think I should read a long, fierce poem. This is not by me except translated. It's the poem of Gyula Illyes [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q381107], called \"Of Tyranny, In One Breath\". Ilona Duczynska [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q967353] did a literal translation for me and then read it to me for sound and we worked through it that way.  Apparently the poem started, or happened, in 1956 in Budapest [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1781]. Illyes had written it some years before but hadn't been angry enough at the time to risk what it was to bring it out. But he grew angry enough and somebody said the one thing that nobody censors is the magazine which tells you what lectures are going on where and what movies are running where and is just a news sheet, and the middle spread was for advertising, so they printed this in the middle sheet and it was, they tried to stop it as soon as the authorities found it but by then they were storming the radio station or however it started. I can't do it in one breath because it goes on for several pages. In the first part of it, \"it,\" meaning \"tyranny\" is small \"i\" and towards the end it's a capital \"I.\"\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:32:27\nReads English translation of \"Of Tyranny, In One Breath\" by Gyula Illyes [published later in Always Now, Vol. 1].\n\nMargaret Avison\n00:39:26\nSo, after the revolution he was much too well-known to disappear but they said he was insane and he was in an asylum for a while, but he wrote a lot of lovely things there, so I don't think he was, and he's not there now. It's much better, I think. A group of silly things it's embarrassing to read but I will, called \"Bestialities\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:40:19\nReads \"Bestialities\", parts 1-5 [from The Dumbfounding; audience laughter throughout].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:41:14\nThe last one I think is just beautiful, but nobody gets it unless I explain, so I'll explain, it's like you take a piece of 8 by 11 typing paper...\n \nAudience Member 1\n00:41:26\nDon't explain, just say it.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:41:28\nAlright, you can tell me then, eh? \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:41:33\nReads \"Bestialities\", part 6 [from The Dumbfounding].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:41:40\nNow, come on...[Audience laughter]. Hmm? Does anybody want the explanation? Well I've read it. It's just a crumpled-up letter, you know, you get it and you read it and you cry and you crumble it up and you throw it down and the mite goes up...Now I'll read it again.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:42:17\nReads \"Bestialities\", part 6 [from The Dumbfounding].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:42:35\n“The Absorbed\". This is one of the very cold days, I guess about ten below, enough. It's inside the pane of glass separating inside from outside comes into it, a certain kind of sky that goes with that which is like glass again. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:43:09\nReads \"The Absorbed\" [from The Dumbfounding].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:45:50\nReads [\"Thaw\" from Winter Sun].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:47:37\nI would like to read two other weather ones and then I'll give you a break. This is “Two Mayday Selves”.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:47:54\nReads \"Two Mayday Selves\" [from The Dumbfounding].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:49:42\nAnd the last one is late spring, early summer. Jet-plane and terminuses, called \"Black-White Under Green, May 18th 1965”.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:50:06\nReads \"Black-White Under Green, May 18th 1965” [published as “May 18 1965” in The Dumbfounding].\n\nUnknown\n00:52:53\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nMargaret Avison\n00:52:54\nI've been asked to read \"The Valiant Vacationist\". It was written so many years ago...I think I would be quite right in saying thirty years ago, and probably a little more. And I couldn't write this well now but in a way when you're very young you've got the whole world in one lump without any lump, and you only get bits later on. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:53:34\nReads \"The Valiant Vacationist\" [published later in Always Now: Vol. 1].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:56:54\nThen the one \"To Professor X, Year Y\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:57:03\nReads \"To Professor X, Year Y\" [from Winter Sun].\n\nMargaret Avison\n00:59:57\nI'd like to read one introductory poem to the long one, \"The Earth that Falls Away\", and that one, and two short ones, if you'll bear with me that long. This is called \"The Absolute, the Day\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n01:00:22\nReads \"The Absolute, the Day\" [published later as “Absolute” in sunblue and in Always Now Vol. 2].\n\nMargaret Avison\n01:01:39\nThis one is \"The Earth that Falls Away\". There's an epigraph from Beddoes’ [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2165597] Death's Jest-Book [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q42188673]: \"Can a man die? Aye, as the sun doth set, it is the earth that falls away from light\". There are a number of human situations, some into the past, through the present generation, the rest various city people, myself, and the stories come interleaving so that as I name a new section it'll be a new group of people, and by request I'm going to  stop at the line-ends here. \n \nMargaret Avison\n01:02:32\nReads \"The Earth that Falls Away\" [from The Dumbfounding].\n \nMargaret Avison\n01:15:52\nReads [\"He Couldn’t Be Safe (Isaiah 53:5)”, published later in sunblue].\n \nMargaret Avison\n01:16:54\nThere's one more and I'll stop with this one. \n \nMargaret Avison\n01:17:00\nReads [section from “The Jo Poems”, part 6. Published later in No Time. Subtitled “Having” in Always Now: Vol. 2].\n \nEND\n01:17:54\n[Cut off abruptly].\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1967, Margaret Avison was teaching English at Scarborough College. The Dumbfounding had been published the previous year.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nMargaret Avison met Roy Kiyooka, who was teaching at Sir George Williams University at a reading in 1963 at the University of British Columbia.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript and print catalogue by Rachel Kyne\\n\\nOriginal print catalogue, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\\n\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>2 CDs>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-vol-1/oclc/32566813&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Anderson, Mia. “Avison, Margaret (1918-)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. Benson, Eugene; Connoly, L.W. (eds). London: Routledge, 1994. 2 vols.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/always-now-the-collected-poems-vol-1/oclc/834732786&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Avison, Margaret. Always Now: The Collected Poems, Vols 1-3. Erin, Ontario: The Porcupine’s Quill, 2003. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/dumbfounding-poems/oclc/635930&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Avison, Margaret. The Dumbfounding. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1966. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/no-time/oclc/751204318&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Avison, Margaret. No Time. Hantsport: Lancelot Press; London: Brick Books, 1989. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/sunblue/oclc/867940471&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Avison, Margaret. sunblue. Hantsport: Lancelot Press; London: Brick Books, 1978.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/winter-sun/oclc/320960000&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Avison, Margaret. Winter Sun. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1960. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-avison-at-sgwu-1967/#reading1-1\",\"citation\":\"“Avison: Next Poet to Read”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 27 January 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/from-there-to-here-a-guide-to-english-canadian-literature-since-1960/oclc/441669839&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. From There to Here: A Guide to English-Canadian Literature Since 1960. Erin, Ontario: Press Porcepic, 1974. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/15-canadian-poets-times-2/oclc/622296707&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Geddes, Gary (ed). Fifteen Canadian Poets Times Two. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990. \"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=O5UtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4p8FAAAAIBAJ&pg=3951,6182119&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Series Coming Up At University”. The Gazette. Saturday, December 31, 1966: page 39.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/margaret-avison/oclc/556890573&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Redekop, Ernest. Margaret Avison: Studies in Canadian Literature. Toronto: The Copp Clark Publishing Company, 1970. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-avison-at-sgwu-1967/#reading1-1\",\"citation\":\"Simco, Bob. “Georgiantics”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 27 January 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-avison-at-sgwu-1967/#reading1-1\",\"citation\":\"Thoms, Kathleen. “Margaret Avison’s Poetry”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 3 February 1967. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548673921024,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.264Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0002_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0002_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Margaret Avison Tape Box - Front\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0002_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0002_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Margaret Avison Tape Box - Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0002_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0002_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Margaret Avison Tape Box - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0002_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0002_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Margaret Avison Tape Box - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/margaret_avison_i086-11-002.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"margaret_avison_i086-11-002.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:17:54\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"187 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Roy Kiyooka\\n00:00:00\\nIn view of the embarrassment of having made such a mess of introducing the last poet, I spent a considerable amount of time setting out what I should say this evening, so hopefully I'll be a little more successful. Well, this is our seventh poetry evening and we welcome you all here this cold and blustery evening. Now, this evening we're having Margaret Avison [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6759152] read poems, and I wanted to say a few things about her. I first listened to Margaret read her poems at the poetry conference, University of British Columbia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q391028], during the summer of 1963. Her reading, together with those of the other poets on hand, are among the most memorable occasions I've had in my love affair with poems and poets. Four years later, in early January, we spent an afternoon together. Now I don't want to attribute, what I felt with a thought, on Bloor Street, to our conversation, but the warmth of it was very real. Margaret Avison was born in Guelph [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q504114], Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904]; some early years were spent in Alberta [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1951]; she graduated from Victoria College [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3551503], the University of Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q180865], in 1940, with a BA in English Language and Literature. She has been a secretary of all sorts for various firms, individuals, and organizations, and has also been a research assistant and librarian and presently teaches English at Scarborough College, Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172]. 1956-57 she was a Guggenheim Fellow [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P6594] in poetry, and during the forties her work appeared in various Canadian magazines, and in the fifties, mainly in American ones. She has published two books of poems; The Winter Sun in 1960 won the Governor General's Award [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q283256], and in 1966, W.W. Norton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1282208] in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] issued The Dumbfounding [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q42189162], her latest book. Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure in introducing to you Margaret Avison.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:02:59\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:02:59\\nI don't know about the reading but I do know about the pleasure of meeting Roy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789] again here, and being introduced by him. If this were Monday, or up to a week from tonight, I would be able to join the Angry Art Week. I don't know if anybody else has received these letters, but in New York City initially they're trying this and anybody who gets a letter from them is asked to dedicate any reading or event to what they're trying to do. You can still send them money, too, I'll give you the address if you want it later. What they're going to do is play harps in railroad stations and have...lets see, Bach [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1339] cantatas in railroad stations, play-ins in various museums and the lobbies of concert halls, recital halls, business buildings--I like that one--dramatic presentations in laundromats and supermarkets, [audience laughter], a paint-in, and fences and billboards throughout Manhattan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11299] with their work showing and so on. This is a series. \\\"What we're trying to do is through art to reach the American people as human beings.\\\" So...[audience laughter]. If this were Monday I'd dedicate the reading [audience laughter and applause]...This is all very orderly, although it doesn't look it, and it starts with other people's poems of various kinds. A little section of C. Bukowski [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q76409], somebody said that's Charles, an American poet. It's a great long thing that was in a mimeograph magazine, and the description is of a woman with a bicycle and a baby carriage, high-heeled shoes, white socks, and all her belongings, on a hot day in the middle of a road in a city. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:05:28\\nReads unnamed poem by Charles Bukowski.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:06:30.\\nThat's sad, so on the same page I copied one of Al Fowler's, which was in a magazine called Lines, which is the all-time happiest little poem, and I don't know why. I'm going to stop where the lines stop, not where the sense stops, so you can see the shape of it.  There's no capital letters. There's no title.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:07:01\\nReads “Are you a root or a tendermint” by Al Fowler [published in Lines 6].\\n\\nAudience \\n00:07:20\\nLaughter.\\n\\nMargaret Avison\\n00:07:30\\nThis is one by Gerry Gilbert [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5552756], called \\\"Zoo\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:07:39\\nReads \\\"Zoo\\\" by Gerry Gilbert.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:08:00\\nI may bring in some more of other people's, but this is just a little, it's a friend of mine in Toronto who's made it to grade seven this year. He calls it \\\"The Delinquent\\\", and he has, in this copy he has said that it's his copyright so if you betray the fact that I read some of it, I'll be in trouble with him.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:08:33\\nReads \\\"The Delinquent\\\" by an unnamed author [audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:10:20\\nIt goes on, a bit, I want to go back to where it gets sad, though. I love \\\"She twisted her pinkies behind her but all the knots held more\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:10:30\\nResumes reading \\\"The Delinquent\\\" [audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:11:33\\nThere's an awful line in the next verse. [Audience laughter].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:11:41\\nResumes reading \\\"The Delinquent\\\" [audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:12:43\\nIt ends up with knotting a burning matchstick into her old man's hair. [Audience laughter]. I think as he goes on he'll be somebody. If I'm not reading mine I'll warn of you. Some of these...the first one is a Toronto poem with footnotes, saying that TTC [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17978] means Toronto Transit Commission, and the Ditch is an open cut on the Yonge subway between Bloor and Rosedale. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:13:38\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:14:37\\nThe second subway poem...a little child, it's called \\\"Subway Station Why Not.\\\"\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:14:53\\nReads \\\"Subway Station Why Not\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:15:56\\nThis next one is St. Clair Avenue, where I live on the car tracks. It's called \\\"Insomniac Report\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:16:11\\nReads \\\"Insomniac Report\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:17:07\\nFeels as if I should be doing something different, but I don't know what. I did a poem to people writing examinations I'm hunting for, but I think I've forgotten it. There's three about this odd experience of teaching and students. This one was written before I had had the experience, but was looking forward to it. And it had the title \\\"Is That You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?\\\" And it's very full of fine theory and idealism.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:18:18\\nReads \\\"Is That You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:19:21\\nAnd I've got two other incomplete ones that should be read with that. I'll just read two stanzas of the first one, it's got one four-line stanza for the students...\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:19:36\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:20:36\\nThe teacher's answer hasn't got written yet. Here's another bit, two stanzas, the student and the teacher, that isn't finished. The student is talking although it doesn't sound like it. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:21:01\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:21:51\\nThere's a daybreak bus I have to catch and this one is called \\\"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:22:03\\nReads \\\"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:23:07\\nI had planned to get all this organized on the plane, but I was in the middle of the three seats and I kept getting the briefcase out and everything would fall to the floor, and this one would dive for it, or this one, and I finally gave up, so it's upside down. This is dedicated to Jacques Ellul [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q322922], The Technological Society [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1607727], a book he wrote that's a little mad but very stirring.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:23:56\\nReads [“Making Senses”, published later in No Time]. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:26:39\\nThere's one here that is just the equivalent to sketching, I guess. I know a poet in Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297] who used to go and sit around in the Art Institute [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q239303], when it was a fairly quiet room, and stare all morning, and if any words occurred to him, he dashed them down. And sometime he worked up his sketches and sometime he didn't, which is a technique that's lots of fun to practice, and occasionally something grows out of it. In this case I don't think I'll ever do anything but it'll show you the kind of thing that I mean, if, as I assume, most of you are writers.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:27:38\\nReads unnamed poem. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:28:25\\nNow a poem with syntax and stuff called \\\"The Seven Birds\\\". A corner of Bathurst and College Street in Toronto which is the kind of buildings that have been there since the first world war, where there's often stores on the street level and an apartment or two above. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:29:01\\nReads \\\"The Seven Birds\\\" [published later in sunblue].\\n\\nMargaret Avison\\n00:30:15\\nI think I should read a long, fierce poem. This is not by me except translated. It's the poem of Gyula Illyes [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q381107], called \\\"Of Tyranny, In One Breath\\\". Ilona Duczynska [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q967353] did a literal translation for me and then read it to me for sound and we worked through it that way.  Apparently the poem started, or happened, in 1956 in Budapest [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1781]. Illyes had written it some years before but hadn't been angry enough at the time to risk what it was to bring it out. But he grew angry enough and somebody said the one thing that nobody censors is the magazine which tells you what lectures are going on where and what movies are running where and is just a news sheet, and the middle spread was for advertising, so they printed this in the middle sheet and it was, they tried to stop it as soon as the authorities found it but by then they were storming the radio station or however it started. I can't do it in one breath because it goes on for several pages. In the first part of it, \\\"it,\\\" meaning \\\"tyranny\\\" is small \\\"i\\\" and towards the end it's a capital \\\"I.\\\"\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:32:27\\nReads English translation of \\\"Of Tyranny, In One Breath\\\" by Gyula Illyes [published later in Always Now, Vol. 1].\\n\\nMargaret Avison\\n00:39:26\\nSo, after the revolution he was much too well-known to disappear but they said he was insane and he was in an asylum for a while, but he wrote a lot of lovely things there, so I don't think he was, and he's not there now. It's much better, I think. A group of silly things it's embarrassing to read but I will, called \\\"Bestialities\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:40:19\\nReads \\\"Bestialities\\\", parts 1-5 [from The Dumbfounding; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:41:14\\nThe last one I think is just beautiful, but nobody gets it unless I explain, so I'll explain, it's like you take a piece of 8 by 11 typing paper...\\n \\nAudience Member 1\\n00:41:26\\nDon't explain, just say it.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:41:28\\nAlright, you can tell me then, eh? \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:41:33\\nReads \\\"Bestialities\\\", part 6 [from The Dumbfounding].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:41:40\\nNow, come on...[Audience laughter]. Hmm? Does anybody want the explanation? Well I've read it. It's just a crumpled-up letter, you know, you get it and you read it and you cry and you crumble it up and you throw it down and the mite goes up...Now I'll read it again.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:42:17\\nReads \\\"Bestialities\\\", part 6 [from The Dumbfounding].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:42:35\\n“The Absorbed\\\". This is one of the very cold days, I guess about ten below, enough. It's inside the pane of glass separating inside from outside comes into it, a certain kind of sky that goes with that which is like glass again. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:43:09\\nReads \\\"The Absorbed\\\" [from The Dumbfounding].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:45:50\\nReads [\\\"Thaw\\\" from Winter Sun].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:47:37\\nI would like to read two other weather ones and then I'll give you a break. This is “Two Mayday Selves”.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:47:54\\nReads \\\"Two Mayday Selves\\\" [from The Dumbfounding].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:49:42\\nAnd the last one is late spring, early summer. Jet-plane and terminuses, called \\\"Black-White Under Green, May 18th 1965”.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:50:06\\nReads \\\"Black-White Under Green, May 18th 1965” [published as “May 18 1965” in The Dumbfounding].\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:52:53\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nMargaret Avison\\n00:52:54\\nI've been asked to read \\\"The Valiant Vacationist\\\". It was written so many years ago...I think I would be quite right in saying thirty years ago, and probably a little more. And I couldn't write this well now but in a way when you're very young you've got the whole world in one lump without any lump, and you only get bits later on. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:53:34\\nReads \\\"The Valiant Vacationist\\\" [published later in Always Now: Vol. 1].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:56:54\\nThen the one \\\"To Professor X, Year Y\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:57:03\\nReads \\\"To Professor X, Year Y\\\" [from Winter Sun].\\n\\nMargaret Avison\\n00:59:57\\nI'd like to read one introductory poem to the long one, \\\"The Earth that Falls Away\\\", and that one, and two short ones, if you'll bear with me that long. This is called \\\"The Absolute, the Day\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n01:00:22\\nReads \\\"The Absolute, the Day\\\" [published later as “Absolute” in sunblue and in Always Now Vol. 2].\\n\\nMargaret Avison\\n01:01:39\\nThis one is \\\"The Earth that Falls Away\\\". There's an epigraph from Beddoes’ [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2165597] Death's Jest-Book [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q42188673]: \\\"Can a man die? Aye, as the sun doth set, it is the earth that falls away from light\\\". There are a number of human situations, some into the past, through the present generation, the rest various city people, myself, and the stories come interleaving so that as I name a new section it'll be a new group of people, and by request I'm going to  stop at the line-ends here. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n01:02:32\\nReads \\\"The Earth that Falls Away\\\" [from The Dumbfounding].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n01:15:52\\nReads [\\\"He Couldn’t Be Safe (Isaiah 53:5)”, published later in sunblue].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n01:16:54\\nThere's one more and I'll stop with this one. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n01:17:00\\nReads [section from “The Jo Poems”, part 6. Published later in No Time. Subtitled “Having” in Always Now: Vol. 2].\\n \\nEND\\n01:17:54\\n[Cut off abruptly].\\n\",\"notes\":\"Margaret Avison reads from Winter Sun (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960) and The Dumbfounding (W.W. Norton & Co, 1966), as well as a few poems published years later in books like sunblue (Lancelot Press, 1978) and No Time (Lancelot Press and Brick Books, 1998). The majority of the poems read were also collected in three volumes, entitled Always Now (The Porcupine’s Quill, 2003).\\n\\nI086-11-002.1=AC\\n\\n(Rachel has indexed poems)\\n00:00- Roy Kiyooka introduces Margaret Avison. [INDEX: seventh poetry evening, poetry conference at UBC summer of 1963; Bloor Street, Guelph Ontario, Alberta, Victoria College of the University of Toronto in 1940 with BA from English Language and Literature, secretary at firms, research assistant, librarian, teaching English at    \\tScarborough College (Toronto), Guggenheim Fellow 1956-7, Canadian and American    \\tmagazines; books: The Winter Sun won Governor General’s Award in 1960, The    Dumbfounding (W.W. Norton in New York, 1966).]\\n02:59- Avison introduces poem by Charles Bukowski, first line “She had gone wrong somewhere...” [INDEX: Roy Kiyooka (meeting), Angry Art Week in NYC, dedicate    \\treadings to Angry Art Week, Bach, Manhattan, American people, American poet,        \\tMimeograph Magazine.]\\n05:28- Reads section from a poem by Charles Bukowski “She had gone wrong somewhere...”\\n06:30- Introduces poem by Al Fowler first line “Quote: Are you a root or a tender mint     tea?”. [INDEX: magazine Line, line stops, shape of poem, no capital letters, no title.]\\n07:01- Reads poem by Al Fowler, first line “Quote: Are you a root or a tender mint tea?”.\\n07:30- Introduces poem by Gerry Gilbert called “Zoo”.\\n07:39- Reads poem by Gerry Gilbert, called  “Zoo”.\\n08:00- Introduces poem called “The Delinquent”  by unknown child. [INDEX: friend in Toronto, in grade seven.]\\n08:33- Reads “The Delinquent”.\\n10:20- Interjects comment about poem.\\n10:30- Continues reading “The Delinquent”.\\n11:33- Interjects comment about poem.\\n11:41- Continues reading “The Delinquent”.\\n12:43- Explains “The Delinquent”, Introduces poem, first line “Inside the TTC’s fence...”.  [INDEX: Toronto poem, footnotes, TTC means Toronto Transit Commission, Yonge       \\tSubway between Bloor and Rosedale.]\\n13:38- Reads first line “Inside the TTC’s fence...”. [INDEX: cities, Toronto, transportation, subway; from an unknown source.]\\n14:37- Introduces “Subway Station Why Not”. [INDEX: subway poem, child, from unknown source]\\n14:53- Reads “Subway Station Why Not”. [INDEX: cities, Toronto,  transportation, subway, child; from an unknown source.]\\n15:56- Introduces “Insomniac Report”. [INDEX: St. Clair Avenue (Toronto), car tracks.]\\n16:11- Reads “Insomniac Report”. [INDEX: cities, Toronto, night, streets, sounds, sleep; from an unknown source.]\\n17:07- Introduces “Is that You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?”. [INDEX: students writing exams, teaching, theory, idealism; from an unknown source.]\\n18:18- Reads “Is that You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?”. [INDEX: school, teaching, work, children, student.]\\n19:21- Introduces incomplete poems, first line “No instant morality for us...”. [INDEX:        incomplete poem, two stanzas of first, one four-line stanza for the students; from an      unknown source.]\\n19:36- Reads first line “No instant morality for us...”. [INDEX: school, teaching, work,        children, students.]\\n20:36- Introduces incomplete poem, first line “The boy with the brilliant promises...”. [INDEX: teacher’s answer, two stanzas, incomplete poem; from an unknown source.]\\n21:01- Reads first line “The boy with the brilliant promises...”. [INDEX: work, school,        teaching, children, students.]\\n21:51- Introduces \\\"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way.\\\". [INDEX: daybreak bus; from an unknown source]\\n22:03- Reads \\\"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way.\\\". [INDEX: nature, time, day.]\\n23:07- Introduces unknown poem first line “A junk truck stopped beside my bus...”. [INDEX: plane, dedicated to Jacques Ellul who wrote The Technological Society; from an unknown source.]\\n23:55- Reads first line “A junk truck stopped beside my bus...”. [INDEX: cities, bus, truck, metal, urban, waste, stone, wreck, yard, grass, gargoyle.]\\n26:39- Introduces first line, “Grey by water...”. [INDEX: sketching, poet in Chicago, Art       Institute; from an unknown source.]\\n27:38- Reads first line “Grey by water...”. [INDEX: language, play, process, sketch.]\\n28:25- Introduces “The Seven Birds”. [INDEX: poem with syntax, corner of Bathurst and     College Street in Toronto, First World War building; from sunblue in “Sketches”.]\\n29:01- Reads “The Seven Birds”.\\n30:15- Introduces poem Avison translated, called “Of Tyranny in One Breath” by Gyula     Illyes. [INDEX: Ilona Duczynska, translation, 1956 in Budapest, censorship in magazines, newsheets, radio station, authorities, protest, tyranny; collected in Always  Now, Vol. 1 (Porcupine’s Quill, 2003).]\\n32:27- Reads “Of Tyranny in One Breath” by Gyula Illyes.\\n39:26- Explains “Of Tyranny in One Breath”, introduces “Bestialities”. [INDEX: revolution, Gyula Illyes, insane asylum; from The Dumbfounding.]\\n40:19- Reads “Bestialities”. [INDEX: play, animals, language, puns.]\\n41:14- Introduces first line “Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka...”.      [INDEX: misunderstood poem, 8x11 typing paper.]\\n41:26- Audience member interjects, asks her to read it without explanation.\\n41:28- Avison reads first line “Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka...”.\\n41:40- Explains “Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka...”. [INDEX:        crumpled up letter, mite; from unknown source.]\\n42:17- Re-reads “Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka...”.\\n42:35- Introduces “Be Absorbed”. [INDEX: cold day, glass pane, sky; from unknown source.]\\n43:09- Reads “Be Absorbed”. [INDEX: nature, weather, glass, window, cold, winter, ice.]\\n45:50- Reads “The Thaw”. [INDEX: city, children, weather, winter, spring, streets, dog, sparrow, pigeons, boy; published as “Thaw” in Winter Sun.]\\n47:37- Introduces poem, first line “The grackle shining in long grass...”. [INDEX weather   poem, May; Howard Fink list “To May Day”.]\\n47:54- Reads “The grackle shining in long grass...”. [INDEX: colours, birds, grackle, city,   streets, winter, day, breath; from unknown source.]\\n49:42- Introduces “Black-White Under Green”. [INDEX: late spring, early summer, Jet-plane terminuses, May 18th, 1965.]\\n50:06- Reads “Black-White Under Green”. [INDEX: nature, flowers, birds, plane, flight,     leaves, snow, sky, sea, music, ice; from The Dumbfounding.]\\n52:53.49- END OF RECORDING.\\n  \\nPoem (by stated title or first line):                                     \\nFIRST CD: I086-11-002.1=AC                         \\t\\t           Time            Duration\\n\\n[\\\"She had gone wrong...\\\"]by Charles Bukowski                        00:05:28      \\t01:01\\n[\\\"Quote: Are you a root or a tender mint tea?\\\"] by Al Fowler    00:07:01      \\t00:28\\n\\\"Zoo\\\" by Gerry Gilbert                                                       \\t00:07:39      \\t00:19\\n\\\"The Delinquent\\\" by an unknown, seven year-old friend  \\t00:08:33      \\t04:10\\n[\\\"Inside the TTC's fence...\\\"]                                               \\t00:13:38      \\t00:58\\n\\\"Subway Station Why Not\\\"                                    \\t        \\t00:14:53      \\t01:03  \\n\\\"Insomniac Report\\\"                                                            \\t00:16:11      \\t00:55\\n\\\"Is That You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?\\\"                 \\t00:18:18      \\t01:02\\n[\\\"No instant morality for us...\\\"]                                          \\t00:19:36      \\t00:58\\n[\\\"The boy with the brilliant promises\\\"]                              \\t00:21:01      \\t00:50\\n\\\"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way\\\"                        \\t00:22:03      \\t01:02\\n [\\\"A junk truck stopped beside my bus\\\"]                           \\t00:23:56      \\t02:40\\n[\\\"Grey by water...\\\"]                                                            \\t00:27:38      \\t00:45\\n\\\"The Seven Birds\\\"                                                              \\t00:29:01      \\t01:13\\n\\\"Of Tyranny in One Breath\\\" by Gyula Illyes         \\t        \\t00:32:27      \\t04:58\\n\\\"Bestialities\\\"                                                           \\t        \\t00:40:19      \\t00:54\\n\\\"Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka.\\\"      00:41:33      \\t00:57\\n\\\"Be Absorbed\\\"                                                                    \\t00:43:09      \\t02:40\\n\\\"The Thaw\\\"                                                                        \\t00:45:50      \\t01:40\\n\\\"The grackle shining in long grass\\\"                                   \\t00:47:54      \\t00:46\\n\\\"Black-White Under Green,\\\" May 18th, 1965                   \\t00:50:06      \\t02:47\\n\\nI086-11-002.2=AC \\n\\n00:00- Avison introduces “The Valiant Vacationist”. [INDEX: written more than thirty years before, writing when young; from Elsewhere.]\\n00:41- Reads “The Valiant Vacationist”. [INDEX: vacation, travel, walking, picnic, park, city, landing, steps, trees, bridge, tourist, stranger.]\\n04:00- Reads “To Professor X, Year Y”. [INDEX: November, waiting, uniformity, crowd,        downtown, history, historian, death, snow; from The Winter Sun.]\\n07:04- Introduces “The Absolute, the Day”. [INDEX: introductory poem to “The Earth that Falls Away”.] \\n07:28- Reads “The Absolute, the Day”. [INDEX: power, rabbi, Judaism, good, morality, love.]\\n08:46- Introduces “The Earth that Falls Away”. [INDEX: epigraph from Beddoes’s Death’s Jest Book, human situations, present generation, city people, stop at the line-ends; from The Dumbfounding.]\\n09:38- Reads “The Earth that Falls Away”. [INDEX: long poem, Romans, history, Bible,    silence, breaking, marriage, illness, winter, summer, city, Dawson City, gold rush, books, Canadiana, photographs, remembrance, scholar, value, cloth, fabric, textiles, production, operation, cancer, treasure, children, blind, snow, farm, emptiness, isolation, solitude, sight, sound.]\\n22:58- Reads first line “He chose a street where he wouldn’t be safe...” [INDEX: city, street, party, Bible, safety, saviour, Jesus; from unknown source; not indicated as separate poem on Howard Fink List.]\\n24:00- Reads first line “Sir, you have nothing...”. [INDEX emptiness, nothing, snow, heart, cup, fullness, joy; from unknown source. .]\\n25:01.03- END OF RECORDING.\\n \\nPoems Time Stamped with Duration\\nSECOND CD: I086-11-002.2=AC                         \\t\\tTime            \\tDuration\\n\\\"The Valiant Vacationist\\\"                                                  \\t00:00:41      \\t03:15\\n\\\"To Professor X, Year Y\\\"                                                   \\t00:04:10      \\t02:55\\n\\\"The Absolute, the Day\\\"                                                    \\t00:07:28      \\t01:15\\n\\\"The Earth that Falls Away\\\"                                              \\t00:09:38      \\t13:15\\n\\\"He chose a street where he wouldn't be safe\\\"                   \\t00:22:58      \\t01:00\\n \\\"Sir, you have nothing\\\"                                                     \\t00:24:06      \\t00:55\\n\\nHoward Fink List:\\n“Marg Avison” reading her own poetry 21/1/67 reel information.\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-avison-at-sgwu-1967/\"}]"],"score":2.4686255},{"id":"1260","cataloger_name":["Mahtab,Banihashemi"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Robert Creeley at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 24 February 1967 "],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"ROBERT CREELEY I006/SR89.1\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. I006-11-089.1 is written on a sticker on the tape reel"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 1"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Creeley, Robert"],"creator_names_search":["Creeley, Robert"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/109562114\",\"name\":\"Creeley, Robert\",\"dates\":\"1926-2005\",\"notes\":\"American poet and essayist Robert Creeley was born in 1926 in Arlington, Massachusetts. His early life was marred by tragedy, as he lost his left eye in an accident and suffered the death of his father when he was four years old. Creeley then grew up on a farm, and felt repressed by his traditional Puritanical New England upbringing. After a year of Harvard University, Creeley joined the US Field Service in India and Burma. Returning again to Harvard, he married his first wife Ann MacKinnon, with whom he had three children, only to leave Harvard in his final semester. From 1948 to 1950, Creeley and his family moved to several locations including Provincetown, New Hampshire; Provenance, France; and Mallorca, Spain. Once in Mallorca, he set up The Divers Press with poet Denise Levertov. Creeley thus began correspondence with Charles Olson, and Olson offered Creeley a teaching position at the Black Mountain College in North Carolina, as well as a Bachelor’s degree in 1954. During his short time at Black Mountain, Creely edited Black Mountain Review, a journal known for its experimental writing. As well as many publications in poetry magazines, he published his first collection of short stories in The Gold Diggers in 1954 (Divers Press). After his marriage dissolved, Creeley headed West to San Francisco, meeting with Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Kenneth Rexroth, as well as other Beat poets during the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance. Creeley then moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, completed his M.A., and then took a position as professor of English. There, he met and married Bobbie Louise Hall, with whom he had two daughters and for whom he wrote most of his love poetry. His first major collection of poetry was For Love: Poems 1950-1960, published in 1962 (Scribner Press). Creeley subsequently published his novel, The Island (Scribner Press, 1963), and other poetry collections including Words (Scribner), The Charm: Early and Uncollected Poems (Perishable Press, 1967), and Pieces (Scribner, 1969). His essays and prose publications include A Quick Graph: Collected Notes and Essays (Four Seasons Foundation, 1970), A Sense of Measure (Calder and Boyars, 1973), and Was That a Real Poem and Other Essays (Four Seasons Foundation, 1979). His marriage with Bobbie ended in the late 70’s, and he married his third wife, Penelope Highton.  Creeley continued to publish his poetry in collections such as Later (New Directions, 1979), Mirrors (New Directions, 1983), Windows (New Directions, 1990), Echoes (New Directions, 1994), Life and Death (New Directions, 1998), and If I Were Writing This (New Directions, 2003). He has won a number of awards and honors, including the New York State Poet Laureate from 1989-91. He was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1999, received the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, the Bollingen Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, a Rockefeller Grant and two Guggenheim Fellowships. Robert Creeley died in 2005, but his poetry has been published posthumously in On Earth: Last Poems and an Essay (University of California Press, 2009), The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1975-2005 (University of California Press, 2006) and Robert Creeley: Selected Poems, 1945-2005 (University of California Press, 2008).\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Performer\",\"Author\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Layton, Irving"],"contributors_names_search":["Layton, Irving"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/66482092\",\"name\":\"Layton, Irving\",\"dates\":\"1912-2006\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Layton, Irving"],"Performance_Date":[1967],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"Tape\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1967 2 24\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in \\\"Georgantics\\\" \",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in printed announcement \\\"Georgantics\\\" (Supplemental material)\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Basement Theatre"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Robert Creeley reads from For Love (Scribner, 1962) and Words (Scribner, 1967)."],"contents":["robert_creeley_i006-11-089-1_1987.mp3\n\nIrving Layton\n00:00:15\nMr. Creeley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q918620] has published too many books for me to list for you this evening, but some titles are deserving of notice. His Collected Poems was published by Scriveners in 1962 under the title For Love. He has also published short stories and they're brought out by Scriveners after first being published, privately I believe, under the title of The Gold Diggers. His most recent book, also brought out by Scriveners, is called Words. Mr. Creeley has a style that is unique and inimitable. There are many, both in this country [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16?wprov=srpw1_0] and in United States of America [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30?wprov=srpw1_0] that are trying to capture the delicate, tenuous quality of his work, and not quite successfully. For his is an art of pauses, of hesitations. He affirms by diffidence, and he destroys our pretensions with a whisper. He uses silence as a modern composer of music [unintelligible], or the way a contemporary painter uses space. He bounces words off against the wall of [unintelligible]. If you listen carefully, you'll hear reverberations and the subtlest of echoes. Mr. Creeley is one of the most honest poets writing today. And a very brave man, who knows the price that has to be paid for a good poem certified to endure. He has written a little song, sing days of happiness, make a pardonable wonder of one's blunders. The man who wrote those words knows all that needs to be known about the perilous vocation of the poet. One critic has said his poems are miniatures, but then hastened to add that they are not miniatures, sorry-One critic has said-this is not from memory-One critic has said that his poems are miniatures, but there's nothing miniature about the power that they release. I have said somewhere that he has written skinny poems, that miraculously grow in length and breath, one's air absorbed into one's consciousness. Slender firecrackers that explode with the power of a bomb. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Robert Creeley.\n\nAudience\n00:03:42\nApplause.\n\nRobert Creeley\n00:03:52\nSee now, it's extremely generous, Irving [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1673289], all that. No, because we have had a very long association. I think I'd like to say my piece too, apropos that fact that I think that the kind of community that say either Irving or myself in this way were involved with was what kinds of, no really, how could you find the world?  I mean, I, for example first read his poems in the collection called Cerberus with Louis Dudek [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3261787] and Raymond Souster [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q304129] and then I was very interested in the magazine that they had going called Contact, I was looking for connections I suppose, the man, in no hips sense, but we were, I was extraordinar--I wanted to know where the world was, and Irving seemed to be very much, very much part of any world I certainly could respect. And so, what he generously and definitely himself ignores was that he was that he was a very decisive contributing editor for the Black Mountain Review, and it was really, a very decisive friend all those fifteen years he imagines. Let me read now. Let me start from back then, \"A Song\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:05:47\nReads \"A Song\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:06:37\nThis is apropos. \"The Conspiracy\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:06:43\nReads \"The Conspiracy\" [from For Love].\n \nAudience\n00:07:11\nLaughter.\n\nRobert Creeley\n00:07:12\nThat was no joke. \"Chanson\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:07:26\nReads \"Chanson\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:08:00\n\"The Operation\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:08:05\nReads \"The Operation\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:08:35\n\"The Death of Venus\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:08:41\nReads \"The Death of Venus\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:09:17\nI was thinking Paul Blackburn [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7149388] happily has been here, so this is a poem, again of the same, the same situation that we were very active in the exchange of, I mean, again I want to emphasize  the sense that we were looking around to see what kinds of possibility that we could find in the world and I suppose if we shared anything, I was thinking of Irving's lovely stories and letters about the problems of visiting literary parties [laughs] and partly being forbidden because he made such awkward problems for guests and hosts, etc. So that Paul Blackburn at this point was translating from Provencal poetry, he'd been at the University of Wisconsin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q838330] and had had a very active and useful relation with the woman there, I think it was, teaching Provencal, so that he'd also been very involved with Pound [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q163366?wprov=srpw1_0], with Pound's senses of activity in verse and had therefore become particularly interested in Provencal and had begun to translate, and through the same agency that we had in Mallorca [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8828], my wife and I then, the so called Divers Press that had published Irving's book, we published a collection of Paul's Provencal translations called Proensa. So the title, is actually Paul's title, I can't now remember what- I don't think he ever published the poem it was the title for, but I was struck by it, and you know, you take things, obviously from friends, it was that you were stealing, but that it was always a common situation. It's a form of adaptation, and I think a young friend now at Buffalo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q681025] were presently working was telling me that I am in the courtly tradition which is confusing to me, but I can see what he means simply that did pick up a lot through Paul Blackburn and writers in this way using a vocabulary or sense of possibility involved with that kind of writing. So this poem, for example, would be, would be actually a, would be a poem not written by Paul Blackburn, but a poem much informed by his way of perceiving. \"A Form of Adaptation\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:11:46\nReads \"A Form of Adaptation\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:12:40\n“The Whip”.\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:12:43\nReads \"The Whip\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:13:29\n\"Please\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:13:36\nReads \"Please\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:14:36\n\"The Three Ladies\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:14:39\nReads \"The Three Ladies\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:16:04\n[Unintelligible] \"New Year’s\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:16:17\nReads \"New Year’s\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:17:34\n\"Entre Nous\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:17:40\nReads \"Entre Nous\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:18:08\n\"The Place\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:18:11\nReads \"The Place\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:19:20\n\"The Hill\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:19:32\nReads \"The Hill\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:20:21\n\"The Awakening\" for Charles Olson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q922978].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:20:25\nReads \"The Awakening\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:22:04\n\"The Rain\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:22:12\nReads \"The Rain\" [from For Love]. \n \nRobert Creeley\n00:23:12\n\"Kore\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:23:20\nReads \"Kore\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:24:09\nI thought I'd read a few more of these in this particular collection. Zukofsky [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q975481] is a man I very much respect. \"The House\", for Louis Zukofsky.\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:24:29\nReads \"The House\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:25:06\n\"The Pool\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:25:13\nReads \"The Pool\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:26:18\nWater, I really love water. To Water.\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:26:26\nReads \"The Rocks\" [from Words].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:27:47\n\"The Fire\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:27:50\nReads \"The Fire\" [from Words].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:28:31\n\"Something\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:28:37\nReads \"Something” [from Words].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:29:46\nThat was a, there's another poem with that same sense, no really, I'm very, I think that some of the lovely incongruities of existence [unintelligible] Charlotte- whose last name I can't remember, [unintelligible] like to say was arrested in New York for trying to, as she put it, and I believe, lovely innocence, she wanted to have chamber music as quote sexy unquote as other life circumstances seemed to be becoming, so that she was playing something like [unintelligible] or Bach [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1339] in topless condition and was arrested by a very discreet policeman and taken away. Although she wanted apparently to entertain the sight as well as the ear. I don't know, I mean, why shouldn't she be permitted to do that? \"Distance\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:31:03\nReads \"Distance\" [from Words].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:34:29\nA couple of these, two from Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96]. \"The Window\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:34:36\nReads \"The Window\" [from Words].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:35:30\n\"To Bobbie\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:35:34\nReads \"To Bobbie\" [from Words].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:36:46\nI wanna, there's one poem, apropos I'd like to go back to, a couple--\"The Rose\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:37:02\nReads \"The Rose\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:38:46\n\"Love Comes Quietly\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:38:53\nReads \"Love Comes Quietly\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:39:15\n\"The Gesture\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:39:21\nReads \"The Gesture\" [from For Love].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:39:52\n\"For Love\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:39:56\nReads \"For Love\" [from For Love].\n\nRobert Creeley\n00:42:39\nI want to go back to this one. There's one... called, \"Anger\". This interpolates, so to speak of. I've been traveling in an extraordinary company of people the last, or the week previous and then, we'll see them again at the same activity tomorrow night in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60?wprov=srpw1_0]. We were billed as quote contemporary voices in the arts, unquote, but apart from that the, we were visiting various colleges and universities in the Upstate New York area from say Albany State [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4709390] to Rensselaer Polytechnic [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49211] to Potsdam [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7603628], and then places St Lawrence [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1411093] or Union College [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1567748] and we were trying, in effect, to- we had the problem of we were billed as a panel, seven men, sitting down to discuss- John Cage [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q180727] is one of the participants, and he said, 'well', of course if we sit down, we say, 'well where do you think art is going?' and then you have to figure out where do you think art's come from? [laughter] And at that point you just might as well come home because it's going to be a long, long conversation. So we decided that we would, instead of having the formal sense of panel, that we would simply create, improvise, or go about in effect at our own activity, except that we wouldn't isolate ourselves in that but would simply try to improvise, as we were seven people, a poem that could permit each one of us to be active, all together so that we at no point had much- we had no decision as to what the others would be doing, so that the whole activity occurred as the complex, and I was- I mean, I had never had any experience of this kind previously at all, John Cage had made, oh very large decisions indeed about this kind of possibility in music, simply that he wanted all possibility of sound to be admitted into the context that music proposes. He also had very decisive relation to what are called loosely 'happenings', and both he and Merce Cunningham [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q318364], another participant, had in that with some previous experience, but the point is that they weren't- neither was trying to create a system from previous experience, but again was trying to think of how this activity of seven people could be evident in ways that simply didn't create a three-ring circus but was actually a participation so, I was intrigued, I was extraordinarily intrigued as to how words, as poetry and whatnot could enter into this circumstance, and because I literally was in it, I have in a sense no quote objective unquote experience at all, but it was extraordinary to me to hear how things are heard in a multiple, in a multiple event, rather than the kind of singularity that this occasion proposes. So I still have that on my mind in a way, and I may, I really do feel that say, all the arts, I mean if one does want some kind of statement about them, that all the arts are moving into a situation where the agency is becoming less and less singular, I don't mean necessarily that in some seminal sense, that everyone's quote an artist, I mean I don't know what an artist is, in one way at all, but I think that the participation is becoming much more a situation of process and activity, and that it is becoming less and less evident as one singular isolation of person, and I realize in my own writing how much the previous condition had been my, my occasion. So, I may be reading these poems for the last time in that sense. I'm certainly prepared to do so, I'm not at all interested in continuing an activity that maybe, you know, maybe have much more experience or much more range of possibility than say contemporary habits about it seem to imply. But anyhow, that was interesting to me to have that experience and also interesting of course is what it had as an impact on educational process. Immediately this activity finished and I've never been in such a- I mean I've been, you know, like they say in [unintelligible] auditorium in the summer, I certainly have seen light shows and other [unintelligible] happenings, a few years ago, it was Roy Kiyooka [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789], knows, having been there also, there was an extraordinary happening like they say put on by the Tate Music Center from San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62]  [unintelligible] being the painter doing the so called decor, doing the set, the set that was used, creating the visual. But this other thing was something quite distinct, simply that each person was so active in ways that he couldn't anticipate and we had with us also Billy Kluver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4912866], who can be most easily identified as the man who, is literally is an Engineer at Bell Labs [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q217365] in New Jersey [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1408?wprov=srpw1_0] who engineered the 9 Evenings [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4646407] of the Armory [Hall (?)] in company with Rauschenberg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q164358], [Vergan (?)] and Cage [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q180727] and others, a situation that brought technology into close apropos with the arts, and led to the practical effects of this activity are very evident, it led to ten patented inventions, all of which have much more extensive use, let's say than that occasion of those particular evenings. That was [unintelligible] you know, many, many poets [unintelligible] of this kind, that is, it turns out that when the arts are permitted this situation, that, I think we were talking to Irving earlier this evening, I think we both fear a situation, or have some kind of, feeling of personal awkwardness about a situation that is turning to the arts as if the arts had a necessary message or condition of life to stake for people to have use of, I mean, again, in these evenings we were round in these colleges, I mean the students or the people present, again and again said that \"what were you trying to tell us?\" And the point was that we weren't trying to tell them anything. We were in fact, we thought, that the activity was something which each person could have experienced, it would be like going to the beach and saying what do you think the water is trying to tell us? [audience laughter.] And you stand there, you're swimming [unintelligible] for two hours enjoying yourself thoroughly and then you come out and say to your friend, but what did it all mean? You know, we assumed that the people there would have some - would have some decision of their own, you know, did you think it was too cold, or too hot, or did you enjoy it, or you know, that's the kind of question no one can answer for you. In any case, I do feel the arts has, as Irving feels also, are being turned to, as some possibility of decision in contemporary society and don't think they can offer that ever, I don't- I think the very value of the arts is that they have no conclusion of this kind to propose, that what they do give is something I think perhaps Pound puts as ably as anyone when he says that \"art is the antenna of the race\". It's a very large statement obviously, and I think what he proposes in it is perhaps even can be put more simply in that the arts tend to experience the condition of the society that is, in a sense, and that way I have use of the condition of the society, perhaps more immediately than any other definition or activity in the society, I mean they tend to respond to the present condition perhaps more decisively than any other segment, I mean everyone else tends, not- I don't mean this in any put down sense of their attitudes in this society but I mean, that as the war goes on because it's an historical precedent and so on and so forth, I mean people continued to act as though what they were doing is still what they are doing, what they are doing is still what they were doing and they literally tend to continue in those habits of attitude or activity until something simply makes them impossible, but the arts tend to have experience I think of present condition, that they have no other viable occasion, they tend to propose what the immediate experience of say any life situation simply is, but they have no instruction therefore offer except that is possible, so that as I say, if poetry, as we've now experienced it is about to yield to another situation that is if books or printed medium of this order are to be changed, in societal experience, great, I mean I don't see why I want you to have to carry around all these pieces of paper, there must be, I'm sure that there's a simple way to communicate this kind of content but I do want to make the insistence that these poems or what I'm doing here has- I mean, I'm enjoying this, I'd probably do this even if you weren't here. [audience laughter], obviously did do it, you know. Now this is something else again, I had no messages, if the media is the message, this is perhaps the most absolute demonstration you'll probably get. \"Anger\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:54:01\nReads \"Anger\" [from Words].\n \nRobert Creeley\n00:59:25\nI'd like if people are feeling reasonably restless, I'd like to read one or two more poems and then one more story to make a selection frankly [unintelligible]  I think I'll see what would be useful. A couple of shorter poems for the end. One called \"A Tally\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n01:00:01\nReads \"A Tally\" [from Words].\n \nRobert Creeley\n01:01:41\n\"Enough\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n01:01:45\nReads \"Enough\" [from Words].\n \nRobert Creeley\n01:06:00\nOne last poem I want to read now, [unintelligible] \"The Hole\".\n \nRobert Creeley\n01:06:07\nReads \"The Hole\" [from Words].\n \nRobert Creeley\n01:07:53\nRead a story that's in effect going back some time to the time of the writing of the Island, a novel. And I hadn't written any prose for some time, not since the middle 50's and I had a [joke (?)], myself and my wife and our four kids were all down in Guatemala [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q774]where I was tutoring children on a coffee plantation, and having that kind of isolation and time that seemed to, you know, have the possibility to try some prose. I like prose simply that it has--it's continuous, it permits a kind of variety of activity in ways that sometimes poetry from my own experience, at least in the way I'm given to write it, doesn't altogether- I mean, the emotional demand, let's say in a poem is in my own experience has known it, is of such order that alternatives in a curious way aren't possible, you simply say what you're thus brought to say as best you can. In prose, the emotional so called situation tends to be more various, it goes up, down, it ebbs, flows, re-forms, changes its mind, and so on and so forth, so I--not in recent years, I think the last prose I wrote was this novel, called the Island and I've not really written any since, that's about--when I was in Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639]teaching I finished that novel, and that was the last prose I think I've written and hopefully won't--I would like to go back to prose for a time. I'd like to have it open, I mean, again, this experience of being with these particular people, whenever habits become, oh let's say whenever you expect everything to be as you have experienced, it's time to look out or do something else because it means that you're assuming of the reality of your life has become too much of a pattern of a habit. Anyhow, this is a story called \"The Book\". I sort of like this story.\n \nRobert Creeley\n01:10:22\nReads \"The Book\".\n\nRobert Creeley\n01:21:15\nThank you very much for your...\n\nAudience \n01:21:16\nApplause.\n\nIntroducer\n01:21:39\nI think I speak for everyone in thanking Robert Creeley for being able to come down and make the scene tonight. There are a couple of announcements that I want to make, the first one I can't remember so I'll have to [unintelligible], [Audrey Brunet (?)], that I do remember invites everyone to come to hear \"Prayers on the Periphery\", an original reading, this coming Monday, March the 6th at 8:30 pm in the little gallery on the mezzanine. Our next reading is a week from now, next Friday, March the 3rd, and Victor Coleman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23882910] and George Bowering [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280] from Buffalo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40435]  and Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172] will be coming. Thank you.\n\nAudience\n01:22:32\nApplause.\n\nUnknown\n01:22:45\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\n\nRobert Creeley \n01:22:48\nReads “The Book” [repeated from 00:27:43].\n\nEND\n01:23:12\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information: \\n\\nRobert Creeley, tenured as a full professor at SUNY Buffalo in 1967, edited The New Writing in the USA with Don Allen, and published Words and The Charm: Early and Uncollected Poems.  Creeley attended the London International Poetry Festival in July of 1967.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections: \\n\\nCreeley had ties with Irving Layton through the Black Mountain Review in the 50’s. Creeley moved to Vancouver to work at the University of British Columbia in 1960-61. He had contacts with Phyllis Webb and Irving Layton. Creeley was George Bowering’s Master's thesis advisor at University of British Columbia until 1963, and wrote introductions for Bowering’s poetry[1]. He came to visit Montreal and Sir George Williams University the same year Layton was poet in residence, after years of correspondence.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>2 CDs>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"},{\"note\":\"Notes on item identifiers: \\n\\nIrving Layton makes introductory speech, and it’s referred to in Irving’s reading, in 1967. I006-11-089.1 and I006-11-089.1-AC2 are from same reading. I006-11-089.2 is a separate reading.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, print catalogue, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Sarah McDonnell and Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/collected-poems-of-robert-creeley/oclc/1151730303&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert, and Penelope Creeley. The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley: 1945-1975. University of California Press, 2006. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/was-that-a-real-poem-other-essays/oclc/247870873&referer=brief_results#reviews\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert; Allen, Donald; Novik, Mary. Was That a Real Poem and Other Essays. Four Seasons Foundation, 1979. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/words-poems/oclc/421895361?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. Words: poems. New York: Scribner, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/sense-of-measure/oclc/718716260&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. A Sense of Measure. Calder and Boyars, 1973. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/some-echoes/oclc/1167543687&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. Echoes. New Directions, 1994.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/for-love-poems-1950-1960/oclc/268031?referer=di&ht=edition\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. For Love: Poems Poems 1950-1960. New York: Scribner, 1962. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/if-i-were-writing-this/oclc/181140062&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. If I Were Writing This. New Directions, 2008. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/later/oclc/470953767&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. Later. New Directions, 1980. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/life-death/oclc/694895837&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. Life and Death. New Directions, 2000.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/mirrors/oclc/239774564&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. Mirrors. New Directions, 1983. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/on-earth-last-poems-and-an-essay/oclc/264039622&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. On Earth: Last Poems and an Essay. University of California Press, 2009. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/pieces/oclc/729928833&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. Pieces. Scribner, 1969. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/charm/oclc/9997283&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. The Charm: Early and Uncollected Poems. Book People & Mudra, 1971. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/gold-diggers-and-other-stories/oclc/10263594&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. The Gold Diggers. Divers Press, 1954. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/windows/oclc/797857141&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Creeley, Robert. Windows. Boyars, 1991. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/robert-creeley-a-biography/oclc/951202214&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Fass, Ekbert. Robert Creeley: A Biography. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001. \"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=O5UtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4p8FAAAAIBAJ&pg=3951,6182119&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Series Coming Up At University”. Montreal: The Gazette. 31 December 1966, page 39.  \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"O’Reilly, Elizabeth. “Creeley, Robert, 1926-”. Literature Online Biography. Proquest, 2008. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548677066752,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.264Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0089-1_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0089-1_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Robert Creeley Tape Box 1 - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0089-1_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0089-1_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Robert Creeley Tape Box 1 - Front\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0089-1_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0089-1_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Robert Creeley Tape Box 1 - Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0089-1_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0089-1_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Robert Creeley Tape Box 1 - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/robert_creeley_i006-11-089-1_1967.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"robert_creeley_i006-11-089-1_1987.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:23:12\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"199.7 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Irving Layton\\n00:00:15\\nMr. Creeley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q918620] has published too many books for me to list for you this evening, but some titles are deserving of notice. His Collected Poems was published by Scriveners in 1962 under the title For Love. He has also published short stories and they're brought out by Scriveners after first being published, privately I believe, under the title of The Gold Diggers. His most recent book, also brought out by Scriveners, is called Words. Mr. Creeley has a style that is unique and inimitable. There are many, both in this country [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16?wprov=srpw1_0] and in United States of America [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30?wprov=srpw1_0] that are trying to capture the delicate, tenuous quality of his work, and not quite successfully. For his is an art of pauses, of hesitations. He affirms by diffidence, and he destroys our pretensions with a whisper. He uses silence as a modern composer of music [unintelligible], or the way a contemporary painter uses space. He bounces words off against the wall of [unintelligible]. If you listen carefully, you'll hear reverberations and the subtlest of echoes. Mr. Creeley is one of the most honest poets writing today. And a very brave man, who knows the price that has to be paid for a good poem certified to endure. He has written a little song, sing days of happiness, make a pardonable wonder of one's blunders. The man who wrote those words knows all that needs to be known about the perilous vocation of the poet. One critic has said his poems are miniatures, but then hastened to add that they are not miniatures, sorry-One critic has said-this is not from memory-One critic has said that his poems are miniatures, but there's nothing miniature about the power that they release. I have said somewhere that he has written skinny poems, that miraculously grow in length and breath, one's air absorbed into one's consciousness. Slender firecrackers that explode with the power of a bomb. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Robert Creeley.\\n\\nAudience\\n00:03:42\\nApplause.\\n\\nRobert Creeley\\n00:03:52\\nSee now, it's extremely generous, Irving [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1673289], all that. No, because we have had a very long association. I think I'd like to say my piece too, apropos that fact that I think that the kind of community that say either Irving or myself in this way were involved with was what kinds of, no really, how could you find the world?  I mean, I, for example first read his poems in the collection called Cerberus with Louis Dudek [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3261787] and Raymond Souster [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q304129] and then I was very interested in the magazine that they had going called Contact, I was looking for connections I suppose, the man, in no hips sense, but we were, I was extraordinar--I wanted to know where the world was, and Irving seemed to be very much, very much part of any world I certainly could respect. And so, what he generously and definitely himself ignores was that he was that he was a very decisive contributing editor for the Black Mountain Review, and it was really, a very decisive friend all those fifteen years he imagines. Let me read now. Let me start from back then, \\\"A Song\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:05:47\\nReads \\\"A Song\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:06:37\\nThis is apropos. \\\"The Conspiracy\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:06:43\\nReads \\\"The Conspiracy\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:07:11\\nLaughter.\\n\\nRobert Creeley\\n00:07:12\\nThat was no joke. \\\"Chanson\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:07:26\\nReads \\\"Chanson\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:08:00\\n\\\"The Operation\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:08:05\\nReads \\\"The Operation\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:08:35\\n\\\"The Death of Venus\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:08:41\\nReads \\\"The Death of Venus\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:09:17\\nI was thinking Paul Blackburn [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7149388] happily has been here, so this is a poem, again of the same, the same situation that we were very active in the exchange of, I mean, again I want to emphasize  the sense that we were looking around to see what kinds of possibility that we could find in the world and I suppose if we shared anything, I was thinking of Irving's lovely stories and letters about the problems of visiting literary parties [laughs] and partly being forbidden because he made such awkward problems for guests and hosts, etc. So that Paul Blackburn at this point was translating from Provencal poetry, he'd been at the University of Wisconsin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q838330] and had had a very active and useful relation with the woman there, I think it was, teaching Provencal, so that he'd also been very involved with Pound [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q163366?wprov=srpw1_0], with Pound's senses of activity in verse and had therefore become particularly interested in Provencal and had begun to translate, and through the same agency that we had in Mallorca [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8828], my wife and I then, the so called Divers Press that had published Irving's book, we published a collection of Paul's Provencal translations called Proensa. So the title, is actually Paul's title, I can't now remember what- I don't think he ever published the poem it was the title for, but I was struck by it, and you know, you take things, obviously from friends, it was that you were stealing, but that it was always a common situation. It's a form of adaptation, and I think a young friend now at Buffalo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q681025] were presently working was telling me that I am in the courtly tradition which is confusing to me, but I can see what he means simply that did pick up a lot through Paul Blackburn and writers in this way using a vocabulary or sense of possibility involved with that kind of writing. So this poem, for example, would be, would be actually a, would be a poem not written by Paul Blackburn, but a poem much informed by his way of perceiving. \\\"A Form of Adaptation\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:11:46\\nReads \\\"A Form of Adaptation\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:12:40\\n“The Whip”.\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:12:43\\nReads \\\"The Whip\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:13:29\\n\\\"Please\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:13:36\\nReads \\\"Please\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:14:36\\n\\\"The Three Ladies\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:14:39\\nReads \\\"The Three Ladies\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:16:04\\n[Unintelligible] \\\"New Year’s\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:16:17\\nReads \\\"New Year’s\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:17:34\\n\\\"Entre Nous\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:17:40\\nReads \\\"Entre Nous\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:18:08\\n\\\"The Place\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:18:11\\nReads \\\"The Place\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:19:20\\n\\\"The Hill\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:19:32\\nReads \\\"The Hill\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:20:21\\n\\\"The Awakening\\\" for Charles Olson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q922978].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:20:25\\nReads \\\"The Awakening\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:22:04\\n\\\"The Rain\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:22:12\\nReads \\\"The Rain\\\" [from For Love]. \\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:23:12\\n\\\"Kore\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:23:20\\nReads \\\"Kore\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:24:09\\nI thought I'd read a few more of these in this particular collection. Zukofsky [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q975481] is a man I very much respect. \\\"The House\\\", for Louis Zukofsky.\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:24:29\\nReads \\\"The House\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:25:06\\n\\\"The Pool\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:25:13\\nReads \\\"The Pool\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:26:18\\nWater, I really love water. To Water.\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:26:26\\nReads \\\"The Rocks\\\" [from Words].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:27:47\\n\\\"The Fire\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:27:50\\nReads \\\"The Fire\\\" [from Words].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:28:31\\n\\\"Something\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:28:37\\nReads \\\"Something” [from Words].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:29:46\\nThat was a, there's another poem with that same sense, no really, I'm very, I think that some of the lovely incongruities of existence [unintelligible] Charlotte- whose last name I can't remember, [unintelligible] like to say was arrested in New York for trying to, as she put it, and I believe, lovely innocence, she wanted to have chamber music as quote sexy unquote as other life circumstances seemed to be becoming, so that she was playing something like [unintelligible] or Bach [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1339] in topless condition and was arrested by a very discreet policeman and taken away. Although she wanted apparently to entertain the sight as well as the ear. I don't know, I mean, why shouldn't she be permitted to do that? \\\"Distance\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:31:03\\nReads \\\"Distance\\\" [from Words].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:34:29\\nA couple of these, two from Mexico [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96]. \\\"The Window\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:34:36\\nReads \\\"The Window\\\" [from Words].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:35:30\\n\\\"To Bobbie\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:35:34\\nReads \\\"To Bobbie\\\" [from Words].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:36:46\\nI wanna, there's one poem, apropos I'd like to go back to, a couple--\\\"The Rose\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:37:02\\nReads \\\"The Rose\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:38:46\\n\\\"Love Comes Quietly\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:38:53\\nReads \\\"Love Comes Quietly\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:39:15\\n\\\"The Gesture\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:39:21\\nReads \\\"The Gesture\\\" [from For Love].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:39:52\\n\\\"For Love\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:39:56\\nReads \\\"For Love\\\" [from For Love].\\n\\nRobert Creeley\\n00:42:39\\nI want to go back to this one. There's one... called, \\\"Anger\\\". This interpolates, so to speak of. I've been traveling in an extraordinary company of people the last, or the week previous and then, we'll see them again at the same activity tomorrow night in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60?wprov=srpw1_0]. We were billed as quote contemporary voices in the arts, unquote, but apart from that the, we were visiting various colleges and universities in the Upstate New York area from say Albany State [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4709390] to Rensselaer Polytechnic [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49211] to Potsdam [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7603628], and then places St Lawrence [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1411093] or Union College [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1567748] and we were trying, in effect, to- we had the problem of we were billed as a panel, seven men, sitting down to discuss- John Cage [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q180727] is one of the participants, and he said, 'well', of course if we sit down, we say, 'well where do you think art is going?' and then you have to figure out where do you think art's come from? [laughter] And at that point you just might as well come home because it's going to be a long, long conversation. So we decided that we would, instead of having the formal sense of panel, that we would simply create, improvise, or go about in effect at our own activity, except that we wouldn't isolate ourselves in that but would simply try to improvise, as we were seven people, a poem that could permit each one of us to be active, all together so that we at no point had much- we had no decision as to what the others would be doing, so that the whole activity occurred as the complex, and I was- I mean, I had never had any experience of this kind previously at all, John Cage had made, oh very large decisions indeed about this kind of possibility in music, simply that he wanted all possibility of sound to be admitted into the context that music proposes. He also had very decisive relation to what are called loosely 'happenings', and both he and Merce Cunningham [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q318364], another participant, had in that with some previous experience, but the point is that they weren't- neither was trying to create a system from previous experience, but again was trying to think of how this activity of seven people could be evident in ways that simply didn't create a three-ring circus but was actually a participation so, I was intrigued, I was extraordinarily intrigued as to how words, as poetry and whatnot could enter into this circumstance, and because I literally was in it, I have in a sense no quote objective unquote experience at all, but it was extraordinary to me to hear how things are heard in a multiple, in a multiple event, rather than the kind of singularity that this occasion proposes. So I still have that on my mind in a way, and I may, I really do feel that say, all the arts, I mean if one does want some kind of statement about them, that all the arts are moving into a situation where the agency is becoming less and less singular, I don't mean necessarily that in some seminal sense, that everyone's quote an artist, I mean I don't know what an artist is, in one way at all, but I think that the participation is becoming much more a situation of process and activity, and that it is becoming less and less evident as one singular isolation of person, and I realize in my own writing how much the previous condition had been my, my occasion. So, I may be reading these poems for the last time in that sense. I'm certainly prepared to do so, I'm not at all interested in continuing an activity that maybe, you know, maybe have much more experience or much more range of possibility than say contemporary habits about it seem to imply. But anyhow, that was interesting to me to have that experience and also interesting of course is what it had as an impact on educational process. Immediately this activity finished and I've never been in such a- I mean I've been, you know, like they say in [unintelligible] auditorium in the summer, I certainly have seen light shows and other [unintelligible] happenings, a few years ago, it was Roy Kiyooka [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789], knows, having been there also, there was an extraordinary happening like they say put on by the Tate Music Center from San Francisco [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62]  [unintelligible] being the painter doing the so called decor, doing the set, the set that was used, creating the visual. But this other thing was something quite distinct, simply that each person was so active in ways that he couldn't anticipate and we had with us also Billy Kluver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4912866], who can be most easily identified as the man who, is literally is an Engineer at Bell Labs [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q217365] in New Jersey [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1408?wprov=srpw1_0] who engineered the 9 Evenings [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4646407] of the Armory [Hall (?)] in company with Rauschenberg [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q164358], [Vergan (?)] and Cage [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q180727] and others, a situation that brought technology into close apropos with the arts, and led to the practical effects of this activity are very evident, it led to ten patented inventions, all of which have much more extensive use, let's say than that occasion of those particular evenings. That was [unintelligible] you know, many, many poets [unintelligible] of this kind, that is, it turns out that when the arts are permitted this situation, that, I think we were talking to Irving earlier this evening, I think we both fear a situation, or have some kind of, feeling of personal awkwardness about a situation that is turning to the arts as if the arts had a necessary message or condition of life to stake for people to have use of, I mean, again, in these evenings we were round in these colleges, I mean the students or the people present, again and again said that \\\"what were you trying to tell us?\\\" And the point was that we weren't trying to tell them anything. We were in fact, we thought, that the activity was something which each person could have experienced, it would be like going to the beach and saying what do you think the water is trying to tell us? [audience laughter.] And you stand there, you're swimming [unintelligible] for two hours enjoying yourself thoroughly and then you come out and say to your friend, but what did it all mean? You know, we assumed that the people there would have some - would have some decision of their own, you know, did you think it was too cold, or too hot, or did you enjoy it, or you know, that's the kind of question no one can answer for you. In any case, I do feel the arts has, as Irving feels also, are being turned to, as some possibility of decision in contemporary society and don't think they can offer that ever, I don't- I think the very value of the arts is that they have no conclusion of this kind to propose, that what they do give is something I think perhaps Pound puts as ably as anyone when he says that \\\"art is the antenna of the race\\\". It's a very large statement obviously, and I think what he proposes in it is perhaps even can be put more simply in that the arts tend to experience the condition of the society that is, in a sense, and that way I have use of the condition of the society, perhaps more immediately than any other definition or activity in the society, I mean they tend to respond to the present condition perhaps more decisively than any other segment, I mean everyone else tends, not- I don't mean this in any put down sense of their attitudes in this society but I mean, that as the war goes on because it's an historical precedent and so on and so forth, I mean people continued to act as though what they were doing is still what they are doing, what they are doing is still what they were doing and they literally tend to continue in those habits of attitude or activity until something simply makes them impossible, but the arts tend to have experience I think of present condition, that they have no other viable occasion, they tend to propose what the immediate experience of say any life situation simply is, but they have no instruction therefore offer except that is possible, so that as I say, if poetry, as we've now experienced it is about to yield to another situation that is if books or printed medium of this order are to be changed, in societal experience, great, I mean I don't see why I want you to have to carry around all these pieces of paper, there must be, I'm sure that there's a simple way to communicate this kind of content but I do want to make the insistence that these poems or what I'm doing here has- I mean, I'm enjoying this, I'd probably do this even if you weren't here. [audience laughter], obviously did do it, you know. Now this is something else again, I had no messages, if the media is the message, this is perhaps the most absolute demonstration you'll probably get. \\\"Anger\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:54:01\\nReads \\\"Anger\\\" [from Words].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n00:59:25\\nI'd like if people are feeling reasonably restless, I'd like to read one or two more poems and then one more story to make a selection frankly [unintelligible]  I think I'll see what would be useful. A couple of shorter poems for the end. One called \\\"A Tally\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n01:00:01\\nReads \\\"A Tally\\\" [from Words].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n01:01:41\\n\\\"Enough\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n01:01:45\\nReads \\\"Enough\\\" [from Words].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n01:06:00\\nOne last poem I want to read now, [unintelligible] \\\"The Hole\\\".\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n01:06:07\\nReads \\\"The Hole\\\" [from Words].\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n01:07:53\\nRead a story that's in effect going back some time to the time of the writing of the Island, a novel. And I hadn't written any prose for some time, not since the middle 50's and I had a [joke (?)], myself and my wife and our four kids were all down in Guatemala [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q774]where I was tutoring children on a coffee plantation, and having that kind of isolation and time that seemed to, you know, have the possibility to try some prose. I like prose simply that it has--it's continuous, it permits a kind of variety of activity in ways that sometimes poetry from my own experience, at least in the way I'm given to write it, doesn't altogether- I mean, the emotional demand, let's say in a poem is in my own experience has known it, is of such order that alternatives in a curious way aren't possible, you simply say what you're thus brought to say as best you can. In prose, the emotional so called situation tends to be more various, it goes up, down, it ebbs, flows, re-forms, changes its mind, and so on and so forth, so I--not in recent years, I think the last prose I wrote was this novel, called the Island and I've not really written any since, that's about--when I was in Vancouver [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q24639]teaching I finished that novel, and that was the last prose I think I've written and hopefully won't--I would like to go back to prose for a time. I'd like to have it open, I mean, again, this experience of being with these particular people, whenever habits become, oh let's say whenever you expect everything to be as you have experienced, it's time to look out or do something else because it means that you're assuming of the reality of your life has become too much of a pattern of a habit. Anyhow, this is a story called \\\"The Book\\\". I sort of like this story.\\n \\nRobert Creeley\\n01:10:22\\nReads \\\"The Book\\\".\\n\\nRobert Creeley\\n01:21:15\\nThank you very much for your...\\n\\nAudience \\n01:21:16\\nApplause.\\n\\nIntroducer\\n01:21:39\\nI think I speak for everyone in thanking Robert Creeley for being able to come down and make the scene tonight. There are a couple of announcements that I want to make, the first one I can't remember so I'll have to [unintelligible], [Audrey Brunet (?)], that I do remember invites everyone to come to hear \\\"Prayers on the Periphery\\\", an original reading, this coming Monday, March the 6th at 8:30 pm in the little gallery on the mezzanine. Our next reading is a week from now, next Friday, March the 3rd, and Victor Coleman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23882910] and George Bowering [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280] from Buffalo [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40435]  and Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172] will be coming. Thank you.\\n\\nAudience\\n01:22:32\\nApplause.\\n\\nUnknown\\n01:22:45\\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\\n\\nRobert Creeley \\n01:22:48\\nReads “The Book” [repeated from 00:27:43].\\n\\nEND\\n01:23:12\\n\",\"notes\":\"Robert Creeley reads from For Love (Scribner, 1962) and Words (Scribner, 1967).\\n\\nI006-11-089.1=AC.1\\n\\n00:15- Irving Layton introduces Robert Creeley [INDEX: Irving Layton, Collected Poems         \\tScriveners Press 1962, For Love, The Gold Diggers, Words by Robert Creeley]\\n03:52- Robert Creeley responds to Layton’s introduction and introduces “A Song”. [INDEX:  \\tCerberus, Contact Magazine, Louis Dudek, Raymond Souster, Irving Layton as editor for \\tBlack Mountain Review]\\n05:47- Reads “A Song”\\n06:37- Reads “The Conspiracy”\\n07:12- Reads “Chanson”\\n08:00- Reads “The Operation”\\n08:35- Reads “The Death of Venus”\\n09:17- Introduces “A Form of Adaptation”. [INDEX: Paul Blackburn, University of Wisconsin, Divers Press, Irving Layton, Provencal Poetry, Ezra Pound, Mallorca, Proensa by Paul Blackburn.]\\n11:46- Reads “A Form of Adaptation”\\n12:40- Reads “The Whip”\\n13:29- Reads “Please”\\n14:36- Reads “The Three Ladies”\\n16:04- Reads “New Year’s”\\n17:34- Reads “Entre-Nous”\\n18:08- Reads “The Place”\\n19:20- Reads “The Hill”\\n20:21- Reads “The Awakening” [INDEX: Charles Olson]\\n22:04- Reads “The Rain”\\n23:12- Reads “Kore”\\n24:09- Introduces “The House” [INDEX: Louis Zukofsky]\\n24:29- Reads “The House”\\n25:06- Reads “The Pool”\\n26:18- Reads “To Water”\\n27:47- Reads “The Fire”\\n28:31- Reads “Something”\\n29:46- Introduces “Distance” [INDEX: New York, Bach]\\n31:03- Reads “Distance”\\n34:29- Introduces “The Window”\\n34:36- Reads “The Window”\\n35:30- Reads “To Bobby”\\n36:46- Reads “The Rose”\\n38:46- Reads “Love Comes Quietly”\\n39:25- Reads “The Gesture”\\n39:52- Reads “For Love”\\n42:39.23- END OF RECORDING\\n\\nI006-11-089.1= AC2\\n \\n00:00- Robert Creeley introduces “Anger” and talks about the state of art and poetry [INDEX:    Upstate New York, Albany State University, Rensselaer Polytechnic, Pottsdam, St.        \\tLawrence College, Union College- Part of Reading Series of seven artists with John Cage, Merce Cunningham. Roy Kiyooka at the Tate Music Center in San Francisco. Billy Kluver from Bell Labs in New Jersey, engineered “9 Evenings” at the Armory Hall with Rauschenberg, [Vergan (?) ] and John Cage. Technology and art, purpose of art, Ezra Pound.]\\n11:21- Reads “Anger”\\n16:46- Reads “A Tally”\\n19:02- Reads “Enough”\\n23:21- Reads “The Hole”\\n25:14- Introduces short story “The Book”. [INDEX: Prose, middle 50’s, Guatemala (teaching \\tchildren on a coffee plantation), writing poetry vs. prose, Vancouver, Island by Robert   \\tCreeley.]\\n27:43- Reads “The Book”\\n38:59- Unknown male thanks Robert Creeley, makes announcements. [INDEX: Audrey Brunet   [?] “Prayers on the Periphery” on March 6th. Victor Coleman and George Bowering from  \\tBuffalo and Toronto reading on March 3rd.]\\n40:32- END OF RECORDING.\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/robert-creeley-at-sgwu-1967/\"}]"],"score":2.4686255},{"id":"1261","cataloger_name":["Masoumeh,Zaare"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Victor Coleman at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series,  3 March 1967"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"VICTOR COLEMAN I006/SR159\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-159\" is written on a sticker on the tape reel"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 1"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Coleman, Victor","Bowering, George"],"creator_names_search":["Coleman, Victor","Bowering, George"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/38160442\",\"name\":\"Coleman, Victor\",\"dates\":\"1944-\",\"notes\":\"A self-educated poet and publisher, Victor Coleman was born in Toronto on September 11, 1944, and he lived in both Montreal and Toronto. By the end of 1964, he had met poet Raymond Souster and founded Island Magazine and Island Press, drawing the avant-garde poetry centre from the West Coast to Toronto. Mr. Coleman was a publishing assistant for the Oxford University Press in Toronto from 1966 to 1967, after which he served for almost ten years as the editor for Coach House Press. Coleman was influential in the creations of Is, Image Nation, The Goose & Duck and Open Letter magazines and journals. He published his own poetry in From Erik Satie’s Notes to the Music (Island Press, 1965),  One/eye/love (Coach House Press, 1967), Light Verse (Coach House Press, 1969), Old Friends’ Ghosts: Poems 1963-68 (Weed/Flower, 1970), along with a dozen other titles. Victor Coleman was the director of the “A Space” (1975-1978), “31 Mercer” (1975-1978), Nightingale Arts Council in Toronto, the editor and writer for the Association of Non-Profit Artist-Run Centres, and has served as the director of the National Film Theatre in Kingston, Ontario. The poet also taught Creative Writing at both Queen's and York Universities. In 1995, as Coach House Press struggled, Coleman and Stan Bevington created Coach House Books to save the Press. In 2001, Victor Coleman became the Editorial Director for the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art, a website devoted to the promotion of Canadian artists and writers. Victor Coleman continues to promote the development of avant-garde or postmodernist Canadian writing.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/34469976\",\"name\":\"Bowering, George\",\"dates\":\"1935-\",\"notes\":\"Mentioned, but missing from recording\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[]}]"],"contributors_names":["Francis, Wynne"],"contributors_names_search":["Francis, Wynne"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/77926194\",\"name\":\"Francis, Wynne\",\"dates\":\"1918-2000\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Presenter\",\"Series organizer\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Francis, Wynne"],"Series_organizer_name":["Francis, Wynne"],"Performance_Date":[1967],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Excellent\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"Tape\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1967 3 3\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in \\\"Georgantics\\\" by Bob Simco\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in printed announcement \\\"Georgantics\\\" by Bob Simco (Supplemental material)\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Basement Theatre"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Victor Coleman reads from One/eye/love (Coach House Press, 1967)."],"contents":["victor_coleman_i086.11-159.mp3\n\nWynne Francis\n00:00:00\nBy the way I must remember a most important announcement, there is to be no smoking in the theatre. You may smoke at intermission, but please do not smoke during the readings. Our first reader tonight is Mr. Victor Coleman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23882910] who comes to us from Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172]. Mr. Coleman is the publisher of Island Magazine [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15754909], and Is Magazine which is spelled 'i' 's' and looks like 'is' but is pronounced 'I’s', and he is also the publisher and editor of Island Press. He is a very active promoter of new Canadian poetry and he himself has published in several little magazines in Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16] and he has made translations from Erik Satie's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q187192] notes to the music, he has also been published in New Wave Canada, an anthology of new Canadian poets published by Contact Press, and edited by Raymond Souster [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q304129]. He is also affiliated, his press, Island Press, is affiliated with the Coach House Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5137585] in Toronto and through this press a book of his poems will be appearing this spring. He is our first reader and our second reader is Mr. George Bowering [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280], who has already published three books, the first one by Contact Press called Points On The Grid, the second one, The Silver Wire published by Quarry Press and the third one, A Man in Yellow Boots, by El Corno Emplumado which was done bilingually in Spanish and in English and which contains montages and illustrations by poet and artist Roy Kiyooka [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789]. Mr. Bowering is also editor of Imago Magazine, which emanated from Alberta [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1951] and which is devoted to the long poem or the longer poem, he is expecting to publish very shortly, in the spring I believe, a novel called The Mirror on the Floor. Mr. Coleman will read first, and then there will be a short intermission, and then Mr. Bowering will read to you.\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:02:49\nI like to make it a habit always at a reading to start off with something that somebody else wrote, simply to show you that my concerns lie elsewhere, then in my own self. This is something from A History of America by an American writer by the name of Bill Hutton and it's— well, I won't explain it to you.\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:03:35\nReads unnamed poem by Bill Hutton.\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:06:00\nI'll read a few short poems first, and then go into something from a sequence, a longer sequence. This is a poem dedicated to Bill Hutton, the author of that piece I just read, it's called \"Buff Hello, 6\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:06:33\nReads \"Buff Hello, 6\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:08:27\nI'm going to focus on that clock every once in a while, simply because I want to keep track of myself. If I might say, um, it's interesting that I'm reading with George Bowering and my general tenure at this time, uh, which I'm not really that self-conscious about which is interesting to me to be growing a beard at this time and that the last time that I started to grow a beard was the first time that I met George Bowering and it was about two years ago and we were sitting up in my attic which was a room and I said to him, \"How do you like my beard?\" and he says that \"It makes you look like an impotent D.H. Lawrence [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34970]”. [Audience laughter]. This is a poem called \"The Lady Vanishes\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:09:41\nReads \"The Lady Vanishes\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:11:14\nHere's a kind of poem that I can bug everybody with because it probably won't mean anything to you at all, but simply because it really is my occasion but rather than hide it away, um, I think that the sound of it is enough to carry to you, some measure of the poetry that I got from the occasion that I speak of. It's called \"For Basil Bunting\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:11:48\nReads \"For Basil Bunting\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:12:34\nI don't know whether any of you are familiar with a Japanese-English dictionary called Kenkyusha [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6389422], if not, all I can tell you is that it's a Japanese-English dictionary and that it has a strange quality to be able to predict the future, by chance operations in that it's very fat and you open it and you're like the guy with the funny hat at the track who really shouldn't be there because he can only guess and he just opens the racing form and sticks his finger on the horse and he bets on the horse and he usually loses. Kenkyusha is a little better than that because you're not trying to win anything, you're looking for some kind of instruction and the time I wrote these poems I was rather desperate for some kind of instruction, and uh, it's just a matter of opening the book, pointing and getting the epigraph for each poem from the Japanese-English dictionary. I'll just read a couple. \"Day Seven\", oh there are given days, that are sort of daily devotions.\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:14:09\nReads \"Day Seven\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:14:33\nReads \"Day Eight\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:15:19\nReads \"Day Ten\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:16:18\nMany of these relate to certain experiences with LSD also.\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:16:29\nReads \"Day Thirteen\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:16:49\nThe reason that the definitions, the English definitions in this section are so interesting and not like the ones we are accustomed to is because the characters that they represent go through their own changes and it's almost an ideogrammatic dictionary rather than a dictionary of definitions.\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:17:13\nResumes reading “Day Thirteen”.\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:20:17\nI need to get one of those spider clocks, can't read in this light.\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:20:39\nReads \"Day Twenty-One\" .\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:22:36\nReads \"Day Twenty-Two\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:24:56\nReads \"Day Twenty-Four\".\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:28:22\nThese next poems are the poems that are closest to me now. It's another long sequence called \"Separations\" and I don't think I need to give you any background on it. I'll not read the whole thing because it's quite long.\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:28:56\nReads \"Separations” [parts 4-8, 10-12, and 14].\n \nVictor Coleman\n00:37:00\nThank you.\n \nEND\n00:37:17\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"George Bowering is repeatedly mentioned on the tape and in printed announcements, but no supporting audio has been found. \",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Year-specific Information:\\n\\nOne/eye/love was published in 1967, and Coleman was working at Coach House Press.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local connections:\\n\\nVictor Coleman was very involved in the promotion of small presses and Canadian writers, specifically through his own presses and Coach House Press. Victor Coleman and George Bowering regularly corresponded (Archives Canada has these correspondences under George Bowering).\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Faith Paré (2020) & Ali Barillaro (2021)\\n\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>CD>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/contemporary-canadian-poem-anthology/oclc/802667762&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bowering, George, ed. The Contemporary Canadian Poem Anthology. Toronto: Coach House \\nPress, 1984. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/one-eye-love/oclc/461736&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Coleman, Victor. One/eye/love. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.ccca.ca/history/ozz/english/authors/coleman_victor.html\",\"citation\":\"“Coleman, Victor (1944-  )”. One Zero One: A Virtual Library of English Canadian Small Press 1945-2044. Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art, 2009. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/victor-coleman-at-sgwu/\",\"citation\":\"Simco, Bob. “Georgiantics”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 28 February 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Staines, David. \\\"Coleman, Victor\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye, eds. Oxford University Press 2001. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548681261056,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.264Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0159_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0159_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Victor Coleman Tape Box - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0159_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0159_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Victor Coleman Tape Box - Front\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0159_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0159_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Victor Coleman Tape Box - Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0159_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0159_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Victor Coleman Tape Box - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/victor_coleman_i086-11-159.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"victor_coleman_i086.11-159.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:37:17\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"89.5 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Wynne Francis\\n00:00:00\\nBy the way I must remember a most important announcement, there is to be no smoking in the theatre. You may smoke at intermission, but please do not smoke during the readings. Our first reader tonight is Mr. Victor Coleman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23882910] who comes to us from Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172]. Mr. Coleman is the publisher of Island Magazine [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15754909], and Is Magazine which is spelled 'i' 's' and looks like 'is' but is pronounced 'I’s', and he is also the publisher and editor of Island Press. He is a very active promoter of new Canadian poetry and he himself has published in several little magazines in Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16] and he has made translations from Erik Satie's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q187192] notes to the music, he has also been published in New Wave Canada, an anthology of new Canadian poets published by Contact Press, and edited by Raymond Souster [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q304129]. He is also affiliated, his press, Island Press, is affiliated with the Coach House Press [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5137585] in Toronto and through this press a book of his poems will be appearing this spring. He is our first reader and our second reader is Mr. George Bowering [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1239280], who has already published three books, the first one by Contact Press called Points On The Grid, the second one, The Silver Wire published by Quarry Press and the third one, A Man in Yellow Boots, by El Corno Emplumado which was done bilingually in Spanish and in English and which contains montages and illustrations by poet and artist Roy Kiyooka [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789]. Mr. Bowering is also editor of Imago Magazine, which emanated from Alberta [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1951] and which is devoted to the long poem or the longer poem, he is expecting to publish very shortly, in the spring I believe, a novel called The Mirror on the Floor. Mr. Coleman will read first, and then there will be a short intermission, and then Mr. Bowering will read to you.\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:02:49\\nI like to make it a habit always at a reading to start off with something that somebody else wrote, simply to show you that my concerns lie elsewhere, then in my own self. This is something from A History of America by an American writer by the name of Bill Hutton and it's— well, I won't explain it to you.\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:03:35\\nReads unnamed poem by Bill Hutton.\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:06:00\\nI'll read a few short poems first, and then go into something from a sequence, a longer sequence. This is a poem dedicated to Bill Hutton, the author of that piece I just read, it's called \\\"Buff Hello, 6\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:06:33\\nReads \\\"Buff Hello, 6\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:08:27\\nI'm going to focus on that clock every once in a while, simply because I want to keep track of myself. If I might say, um, it's interesting that I'm reading with George Bowering and my general tenure at this time, uh, which I'm not really that self-conscious about which is interesting to me to be growing a beard at this time and that the last time that I started to grow a beard was the first time that I met George Bowering and it was about two years ago and we were sitting up in my attic which was a room and I said to him, \\\"How do you like my beard?\\\" and he says that \\\"It makes you look like an impotent D.H. Lawrence [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34970]”. [Audience laughter]. This is a poem called \\\"The Lady Vanishes\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:09:41\\nReads \\\"The Lady Vanishes\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:11:14\\nHere's a kind of poem that I can bug everybody with because it probably won't mean anything to you at all, but simply because it really is my occasion but rather than hide it away, um, I think that the sound of it is enough to carry to you, some measure of the poetry that I got from the occasion that I speak of. It's called \\\"For Basil Bunting\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:11:48\\nReads \\\"For Basil Bunting\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:12:34\\nI don't know whether any of you are familiar with a Japanese-English dictionary called Kenkyusha [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6389422], if not, all I can tell you is that it's a Japanese-English dictionary and that it has a strange quality to be able to predict the future, by chance operations in that it's very fat and you open it and you're like the guy with the funny hat at the track who really shouldn't be there because he can only guess and he just opens the racing form and sticks his finger on the horse and he bets on the horse and he usually loses. Kenkyusha is a little better than that because you're not trying to win anything, you're looking for some kind of instruction and the time I wrote these poems I was rather desperate for some kind of instruction, and uh, it's just a matter of opening the book, pointing and getting the epigraph for each poem from the Japanese-English dictionary. I'll just read a couple. \\\"Day Seven\\\", oh there are given days, that are sort of daily devotions.\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:14:09\\nReads \\\"Day Seven\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:14:33\\nReads \\\"Day Eight\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:15:19\\nReads \\\"Day Ten\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:16:18\\nMany of these relate to certain experiences with LSD also.\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:16:29\\nReads \\\"Day Thirteen\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:16:49\\nThe reason that the definitions, the English definitions in this section are so interesting and not like the ones we are accustomed to is because the characters that they represent go through their own changes and it's almost an ideogrammatic dictionary rather than a dictionary of definitions.\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:17:13\\nResumes reading “Day Thirteen”.\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:20:17\\nI need to get one of those spider clocks, can't read in this light.\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:20:39\\nReads \\\"Day Twenty-One\\\" .\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:22:36\\nReads \\\"Day Twenty-Two\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:24:56\\nReads \\\"Day Twenty-Four\\\".\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:28:22\\nThese next poems are the poems that are closest to me now. It's another long sequence called \\\"Separations\\\" and I don't think I need to give you any background on it. I'll not read the whole thing because it's quite long.\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:28:56\\nReads \\\"Separations” [parts 4-8, 10-12, and 14].\\n \\nVictor Coleman\\n00:37:00\\nThank you.\\n \\nEND\\n00:37:17\\n\",\"notes\":\"Victor Coleman reads from One/eye/love (Coach House Press, 1967).\\n\\nList of Poems Read and Time Stamps [File 1 of 2]\\n0:00 - Introductions of Coleman and George Bowering (also reading the same night, but not on    this recording.) [INDEX: Island Magazine, Is Magazine, Island Press, new Canadian   poetry, translations of Eric Satie’s notes to music, New Wave Canada edited by Ramond Souster published by Contact Press, Coach House Press in Toronto. George Bowering: Contact Press published Points on the Grid, The Silver Wire, A Man in Yellow Boots by El Corno Emplumado in Spanish and English with drawings by Roy Kiyooka. Editor of Imago Magazine, Alberta, Long Poem or Longer Poem, The Mirror on the Floor.]\\n2:49 - Victor Coleman introduces poem by Bill Hutton from History of America, first line “John         Fitzgerald Kennedy shot John Wilkes Booth...” [INDEX: History of America by Bill Hutton]\\n3:35 - Reads unknown poem by Bill Hutton from History of America.\\n5:45 - Introduces “Buff Hello 6”\\n6:33 - Reads “Buff Hello 6”\\n8.27 - Introduces “The Lady Vanishes” [INDEX: George Bowering, D.H. Lawrence]\\n9:41 - Reads “The Lady Vanishes”\\n11:14 - Introduces “For Basil Bunting” [INDEX: Basil Bunting, occasional poetry]\\n11:48 - Reads “For Basil Bunting”\\n12:34 - Introduces “Day Seven” [INDEX: Japanese-English Dictionary Kenkyusha, chance     operations, days of devotions]\\n14:09 - Reads “Day Seven”\\n14:33 - Reads “Day Eight”\\n15:19 - Reads “Day Ten”\\n16:18 - Introduces “Day Thirteen” [INDEX: experiences with LSD]\\n16:29 - Reads “Day Thirteen”\\n20:17 - Introduces “Day 21”\\n20:39 - Reads “Day 21”\\n22:36 - Reads “Day 22”\\n24:56 - Reads “Day 24”\\n28:22 - Introduces “Separations” [INDEX: long sequence poem]\\n28:56 - Reads “Separations”, #4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14.\\n37:17 - END OF RECORDING.\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/victor-coleman-at-sgwu/\"}]"],"score":2.4686255},{"id":"1262","cataloger_name":["Masoumeh,Zaare"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Irving Layton at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 18 March 1967"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"IRVING LAYTON (2 tracks-3 3/4)\" written on sticker on the front of the tape's box and on the reel. \"I086-11-031\" also written on sticker on the reel."],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 1"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Layton, Irving"],"creator_names_search":["Layton, Irving"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/66482092\",\"name\":\"Layton, Irving\",\"dates\":\"1912-2006\",\"notes\":\"Canadian poet Irving Layton was born Israel Lazarovitch in Romania on March 12, 1913. His parents moved to Montreal when he was an infant. He attended Baron Byng High School, and then received a B.Sc. in agriculture in 1939 at MacDonald College. He completed an M.A. in 1946 in economics and political science at McGill University. At McGill, Layton began publishing his poetry in 1943 in First Statement, joining John Sutherland and Louis Dudek on the editorial board, and was involved with Northern Review from 1945-1956. Irving Layton was a founding member of Contact Press, along with Dudek and Raymond Souster in 1952. Layton’s first collection of poems began with Here and now (First Statement, 1945), followed by Now is the place (First Statement, 1948), The black huntsman (Contact Press [?], 1951), Love the conqueror worm (Contact Press, 1953), In the midst of my fever (published by Robert Creeley for Divers Press in 1954), The long pea-shooter (Laocoon Press, 1954), The cold green element and The blue propeller (Contact Press, 1955), The bull calf and other poems, Music on a Kazoo and The improved binoculars (published with an introduction by William Carlos Williams, Contact Press and J.Williams Press, 1956), A laughter in the mind (J. Williams, 1958) and A red carpet for the sun (J. Williams, 1959), which won a Governor General’s Award. He was a member of the editorial board of the Black Mountain Review in 1955. Layton also taught part time at Sir George University (now Concordia University) which appointed him poet-in-residence in 1965. Producing an average of one collection of poems per year, Layton published The swinging flesh (1961), Balls for a one-armed juggler (1963), The laughing rooster (1964), Collected poems (1965), Periods of the moon (1967), The shattered plinths (1968), The whole bloody bird: obs, alphs, and poems (1969), Nail polish (1971), Lovers and lesser men (1973), The pole vaulter (1974), For my brother Jesus (1976), The covenant (1977), The tightrope dancer (1978), Droppings from heaven (1979), For my neighbours in hell (Mosaic Press, 1980), Europe and other bad news (1981), The Gucci bag (1983), and Fortunate exile (1987), all published by McClelland and Stewart Press unless otherwise indicated. Layton also published selected poems in The collected poems of Irving Layton (McClelland and Stewart Press, 1971), The darkening fire: selected poems, 1945-68 (McClelland and Stewart Press, 1975), The unwavering eye: selected poems, 1969-75 (McClelland and Stewart Press, 1975), A wild peculiar joy: selected poems 1945-1982 (1982), Final reckoning: poems 1982-1986 (Mosaic Press, 1987), and Fornaluxt: selected poems 1928-1990 (1992). Layton has edited dozens of anthologies of Canadian poems and prose, as well as having his poetry published internationally. Layton ended his teaching career at York University in Toronto. An influential part of Canada’s literary scene, Irving Layton died on January 4, 2006.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Fink, Howard,"],"contributors_names_search":["Fink, Howard,"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/6332801\",\"name\":\"Fink, Howard, \",\"dates\":\"1934-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Presenter\",\"Series organizer\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Fink, Howard, "],"Series_organizer_name":["Fink, Howard, "],"Performance_Date":[1967],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"BASF\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"00:60:00\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1967 3 18\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"Previous researcher\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Previous researcher\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Basement Theatre"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Irving Layton reads from Collected Poems (McClelland & Stewart, 1965) and Periods of the Moon (McClelland &Stewart, 1967). "],"contents":["irving_layton_i086-11-031.mp3\n\nHoward Fink\n00:00:00\n...Irving Layton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1673289] to this stage again tonight, this time to read his poetry. The last time he was up here was to introduce Robert Creeley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q918620], and what was said then clearly explained the close relations between Mr. Layton and the Black Mountain Group [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2905420] in the 50's, so I won't go into that again, but I'll only add that Mr. Layton was a member of the editorial board of Black Mountain Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2905420] from 1955 on. Of course he's been publishing poetry since the 40's and was associated during those years with the First Statement Press, which became the Northern Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15757902] in 1949, and all this time studying at McGill University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q201492] where he received the M.A. in Political Science and Economics in 1946. It's impossible to list all of his appearances in periodicals and little magazines, and I'll mention only a few of his two dozen or so volumes of poetry, anyway that's what it seemed like to me when I looked at that page in the new one. A Red Carpet for the Sun in 1959, with the well-known introduction by William Carlos Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178106] which acknowledged, American recognition of Mr. Layton's reputation. A Red Carpet, like all of Mr. Layton's subsequent books was published by McClelland and Stewart [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6800322]. Then, a book of short stories and poems, The Swinging Flesh, which came out in 1961, Balls for a One-armed Juggler in 1963, The Laughing Rooster in 1964, Collected Poems in 1965 and his latest work, just published this winter, Periods of the Moon. And I should say the ones that I have mentioned are the ones which are still in stock and able to be bought. Among Mr. Layton's other frenetic activities, poetry readings in Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16], United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30], Germany [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q183] and elsewhere, television appearances, controversial ones and so on, he finds time to communicate with students as well as Poet in Residence of this university [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q326342]. I'd like to present Mr. Irving Layton.\n\nAudience\n00:02:21\nApplause.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:02:30\nThank you Howard, for your kind introduction. I'm glad that you did not introduce me as a letter writer. I'm very glad to see so large a turn out this evening. I am very heartened by it, very moved, and I'm very glad to see so many of my friends and former students in the audience. I like beginning my reading with a poem \"There Are No Signs\" because if any one poem expresses what I try to say, and all the poems and stories that I have written, is that modern man, pretty well, has to find out where he is going, by just going. Now the old sign posts are down, and that he must make his sign posts as he goes along.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:04:00\nReads \"There Are No Signs\" [published as “There Were No Signs in Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:04:51\n\"The Swimmer\", my symbol for the poet, condemned to live in two realms, and happy to live in neither of them. The realm of actuality and the realm of the imagination. Here I compare the poet to the swimmer.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:05:15\nReads \"The Swimmer\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:06:38\nSeveral years ago I taught at the Jewish Library, one of my students was a Mrs. Fornheim, who had lived in Vienna [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1741], and left Vienna when that city fell to the Nazis. She went to Paris [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q90], and left Paris for Spain [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29], when the Vichy government was formed. From Spain, she went to Portugal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q45] and then came to Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340], where I taught her English. She died of cancer, this is my poem for her. \"Mrs. Fornheim, Refugee\".\n \nIrving Layton\n00:07:19\nReads \"Mrs. Fornheim, Refugee\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:08:12\n\"Gothic Landscape\", or what it means to be a Jewish boy growing up in a hostile neighbourhood of French Canadians and Italians who are convinced that you have lately murdered Christ. And where you are entranced by the church bells every Sunday, because of the ecstatic music over the sky, over the rooftops, and yet, in that ecstatic music of the bells, a sound of menace, something alien and frightening.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:09:00\nReads \"Gothic Landscape\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:10:19\n\"The Black Huntsmen\". This was written at a time when Jewish skin was made into lampshades. Or, the song of innocence becoming the song of experience.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:10:42\nReads \"The Black Huntsmen\" [from Collected Poems].\n\nUnknown\n00:12:07\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nIrving Layton\n00:12:08\nThis is how the fringes of a prayer shawl, a sheitel is a wig. If you are an Orthodox, Jewess as my mother was, you have to cut your hair very short and wear a wig so that you are no longer attractive so to speak, to any other man but your husband. Peculiar way of looking at it.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:12:43\nReads \"Archetypes\" [from Collected Poems].\n\nIrving Layton\n00:13:38\nReads \"Soleil de Noces\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:14:15\n\"De Bullion Street\". I don't suppose De Bullion Street has the reputation that it had when I was a boy. I suppose the present administration has cleaned up things, and anyway harlots now are more peripatetic. So this, in a sense, is an old fashioned poem.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:14:40\nReads \"De Bullion Street\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:16:10\n\"On My Way To School\" or the changes that come. I wasn't the most punctual of students, and it's a great comfort to me therefore when I was late to find a sign on a Baptist church \"Jesus Saves\". Many years, I returned and found some change had taken place and this poem celebrates the change, or records it.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:16:44\nReads \"On My Way To School\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:17:20\nReads \"Love the Conqueror Worm\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:18:31\n\"Vexata Quaestio\". Western man is the product we are told, of two traditions, the Greek, and the Hebrew. The Greek, pagan, believing that all experience is worth having, and man should refuse no experience. The Hebrew believing that the proper life, salvation is to be found in obedience to God's will. The two traditions are quite contradictory and can never be reconciled. It is our unfortunate destiny to try to reconcile them. I do not think we have been successful at it because the task cannot be done, it's impossible. So I've written this poem, \"Vexata Quaestio\" and what I'm saying is that each and every one of us in the West is a sort of compromise between these two traditions. Here I use the tree, a tall tree, as a symbol for the Hebraic, the Maccabean and the sun becomes a symbol for the pagan, and you'll see what happens to both the tree and the sun.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:20:11\nReads \"Vexata Quaestio\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:21:19\n\"Cemetery in August\". Only humans of course are aware of death, and even in August, when you feel the flush and thrill and intensity of life, you are aware of the autumn and the winter and when you are in a cemetery, the macabre juxtaposition of life and death becomes even more intense. So I wrote this poem, \"Cemetery in August\".\n \nIrving Layton\n00:21:54\nReads \"Cemetery in August\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:24:20\n\"To the Girls of my Graduating Class\". This was a graduating class, not at Sir George Williams, but my high school I taught several years ago. And I was very fortunate one year in having six very, very lovely, nubile adolescents, very attractive, and very, very well aware of precisely where attractions lay [audience laughter]. And very often when I was in the middle of a serious lecture in history, one of them would make some provocative gesture that would drive my thoughts from the lecture to something far more interesting [audience laughter].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:25:15\nReads \"To the Girls of my Graduating Class\" [from Collected Poems].\n\nAudience\n00:26:30\nLaughter.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:26:33\nAnd what you see when you are in the tavern, the kind of dreams you have about pleasure and about the strange, the strange dance that all of us lead. And this very queer life and journey of ours. And I call this \"Bacchanal\", and it's a rather unusual Bacchanal, because it's a rather sad one, or shall I say a prayerful one.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:27:10\nReads \"Bacchanal\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:28:18\nThis one is for my son, \"Maxie\".\n \nIrving Layton\n00:28:24\nReads \"Maxie\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:30:03\nAnd I suppose all teachers of literature have had the experience of giving an inspired lecture on Shakespeare [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q692] or John Donne [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q140412], and finding some hand at the back waving furiously as you're getting to the home stretch and your peroration is the most resounding thing that you've ever thought about but this hand out there, very insistent, you know, and finally you stop in the middle of the peroration and you say \"Yes, yes what is it?\" and the student says, \"Sir, will this be on the exam?\" [audience laughter].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:30:57\nReads \"Seven o'Clock Lecture\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:34:07\n\"The Birth of Tragedy\". The title is taken from one of the earliest books of Nietzsche [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9358], the gods here that I speak about in the poem, are the gods of Dream and Dance, of Reason and Ecstasy, Apollo and Dionysus, Nietzsche held that tragedy came from the union of both dream and dance, intellect and impulse.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:34:44\nReads \"The Birth of Tragedy\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:36:44\nAnd I suppose no Layton reading would be quite complete without this poem, \"Misunderstanding\".\n \nIrving Layton\n00:36:54\nReads \"Misunderstanding\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:37:16\n\"The Cold Green Element\". This is about life, death, nature, and poetry. It's really a meditation, and, I hope, a passionate meditation on art and life. Like Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213], I am very concerned with the necessary antinomies or contradictions of life. Like Yeats, I believe that great art results from the happy, the miraculous fusion of the two.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:38:04\nReads \"The Cold Green Element\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:40:20\n\"The Improved Binoculars\", my symbol for science. It is truism to say that unless man's moral development, his capacity for sympathy, keeps space, or this development in science and technology he's in danger of blowing himself off the face of this earth. This poem is an apocalyptic poem, it is a vision of the future, such as I hope will never be realized. But in one of my more despairing moments, or one of my more savage and bitter moments, I wrote this poem, \"The Improved Binoculars\".\n \nIrving Layton\n00:41:05\nReads \"The Improved Binoculars\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:42:25\nReads [“Orpheus” from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:44:11\nReads \"Death of a Construction Worker\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:45:08\nReads “Theology” [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:45:47\nReads “For Louise, Age 17” [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:47:14\n\"Song for Naomi\". Naomi's my daughter. Several years ago we were out in the country, I was appalled to find that while she was by the bank of the lake, I couldn't see her because the weeds and the flowers were taller than she was. If she fell into the lake, neither I nor my wife might see it. But nothing happened. Just a day before we were to pack up to leave, I noticed my daughter down by the lake, and this time, her dear little head was peeping just above the weeds and the flowers and this gave me the idea for this poem, which I wrote, while of course my wife did the packing.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:48:12\nReads \"Song for Naomi\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:49:47\nHere's a rather erotic poem, called \"Gathering of Poets\", to be taken of course with a grain of salt.\n \nUnknown\n00:49:59\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:50:00\n...to be taken, of course, with a grain of salt. Just a short thing.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:50:08\nReads \"Gathering of Poets\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:50:40\nReads \"The Bull Calf\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:53:19\nAnd here's a lighter poem called \"Bargain\".\n \nIrving Layton\n00:53:22\nReads \"Bargain\" [from Collected Poems].\n\nAudience\n00:53:46\nLaughter.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:53:58\nThis next poem is for my mother, who died at the age of 89. She was a very remarkable woman, I'd like to tell you a great deal about her, she certainly merits it, she was a most remarkable character with a tremendous joie-de-vivre and a wonderful gift of vituperation, which it is said I have inherited [audience laughter]. Certainly I learned the cadence of poetry from my mother's cursing. My mother would start cursing as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning and wouldn't stop cursing until I closed them at night when I went to bed. But the cadence was what interested me [audience laughter] and I didn't pay any attention to words. Occasionally I would get the drift, of course, of what the curses were intended to say, and I must say it did me a wonderful lot of good because later on when I got knocked my critics and so on, it was like so much water off a duck's back after my mother's cursing. Nothing the critics say could possibly make any impression upon me whatsoever [audience laughter]. She was extremely vain of her black eyebrows. When she was 85, I was taking her somewhere and we stopped for a red light. I noticed a very lovely girl standing on the curb, and of course, I looked very intently at her. My mother caught my intent gaze and said, sighing, \"Yes, she's very beautiful, but has she got my black eyebrows?\" [audience laughter]. She wore earrings that were made of old Romanian coins, she wore an amber necklace, which I remember playing with when I was a child. But it was her immense vitality and joie-de-vivre, coupled with an immense discontent that always fascinated me about my mother. She was a very Orthodox woman, reverencing God, but often giving me the impression that she might have made a much better job of creation than God himself. So this is my tribute to my very, very remarkable mother.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:56:56\nReads \"Keine Lazarovitch, 1870-1959\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:59:16\nReads \"The Well-Wrought Urn\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:59:57\nSome time ago, I went down to the church at Notre Dame, and you know, you have halos lighting up over the head of your favourite saint, or the Virgin Mary, if you drop the requisite number of coins. There's nobody else in that vast gloomy church, except another man and myself, and he went over to the little machine and he dropped some coins, and he waited for the halo to light up and it didn't. And that nettled him a great deal, and he waited, and it still didn't light up so he gave the machine a kick, nothing happened. But he said something and I went home and I wrote this poem.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:01:01\nReads \"This Machine Age\" [from Collected Poems; audience laughter throughout].\n \nIrving Layton\n01:02:09\nThis next poem of mine is also based on an actual experience, I'm sure that most of you have heard of Djilas [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q153909], the very courageous Yugoslav writer who's imprisoned by his erstwhile comrade and companion in arms, Tito. He's imprisoned for writing and publishing outside of the country, Conversations with Stalin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5166446]. That was several years ago, he's just been released. Well I thought a brave man like that deserves some kind of support, especially from and by writers, and so I decided to go up to Ottawa [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1930] and demonstrate in front of the Yugoslav Embassy. I took my wife with me, and one or two of the local poets, we made some signs and we drove up to Ottawa. We got out of the car, and the sign read, of course, \"Free Djilas\", and I was amazed and delighted to find that a considerable crowd gathered around me and the sign. Until I realized just what was happening. And so I wrote this poem, called \"Free Djilas\".\n \nIrving Layton\n01:03:31\nReads \"Free Djilas\" [from Collected Poems; audience laughter throughout].\n \nIrving Layton\n01:04:29\nThis one, in a more serious vein, \"The Predator\".\n \nIrving Layton\n01:04:36\nReads \"The Predator\" [from Collected Poems].\n\nIrving Layton\n01:06:41\nReads \"Plaza de Toros\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n01:09:13\nReads \"At the Alhambra\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n01:10:20\nReads \"For My Green Old Age\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n01:11:44\nNow I want to read a few poems from my most recent book, Periods of the Moon. \"Castles on the Rhine\".\n \nIrving Layton\n01:12:01\nReads \"Castles on the Rhine\" [published as “Rhine Boat Trip in Periods of the Moon].\n \nIrving Layton\n01:12:54\nReads \"Mutability\" from Periods of the Moon.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:14:19\nReads \"Time's Velvet Tongue\" from Periods of the Moon.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:15:20\nReads \"Gratitude\" from Periods of the Moon.\n\nAudience\n01:16:00\nLaughter \n\nIrving Layton\n01:16:04\nMy contribution to the centennial year, “Confederation Ode”.\n\nIrving Layton\n01:16:10\nReads \"Confederation Ode\" from Periods of the Moon [audience laughter throughout].\n\nAudience\n01:17:23\nLaughter and Applause.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:17:34\nReads \"The Beautiful Unknown Girl\" from Periods of the Moon.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:18:55\nAnd this one, \"For Musia's Grandchildren\".\n \nIrving Layton\n01:19:09\nReads \"For Musia's Grandchildren\" from Periods of the Moon.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:20:59\nReads \"Look Homeward, Angel\" from Periods of the Moon.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:21:45\nAnd this last one, \"Family Portrait\".\n \nIrving Layton\n01:21:54\nReads \"Family Portrait\" [from Collected Poems; audience laughter throughout].\n\nAudience\n01:22:59\nLaughter and Applause.\n \nEND\n01:23:43\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nHis collection of poetry Periods of the Moon was published in 1967, and he participated in several other readings at the Jewish Public Library in Montreal, among other places. His poetry was anthologized in Modern Canadian Verse: In English and French (Oxford University Press), edited by F.R. Scott and A.J.M. Smith, The Blasted Pine: An Anthology of Satire, also edited by F.R. Scott and A.J.M. Smith in 1967 (Macmillan). Layton was poet-in-residence at Sir George Williams University.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections: \\n\\nLayton’s meeting with Louis Dudek and John Sutherland culminated in the very influential First Statement magazine and press in 1942. His poetry is widely-read and has been awarded generously. Layton has also become a well-known figure in Montreal, and caught the attention of many critics--for better or for worse. Layton and Dudek helped Aileen Collins found the magazine CIV/n, and with Raymond Souster founded Contact Press in 1952, which both published many young Canadian poets like Margaret Atwood, Phyllis Webb, Eli Mandel, D.G. Jones, Alden Nowlan, Gwendolyn MacEwen, George Bowering, Frank Davey and John Newlove. Through Raymond Souster, he began correspondence with Robert Creeley in 1953, and continued to prove to American poets that Canadian poets had something interesting to say. Layton, Dudek and F.R. Scott promoted and mentored the newer generation of Canadian poets. He has become a Montreal icon, as he spent most of his life in the city.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>2 CDs>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. \\\"Layton, Irving\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press 2001. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/from-there-to-here-a-guide-to-english-canadian-literature-since-1960-ii-our-nature-our-voices/oclc/878901819&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. From There to Here: A Guide to English-Canadian Literature Since 1960, Our Nature-Our Voices II. Erin, Ontario: Press Porcepic, 1974.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/collected-poems-irving-layton/oclc/460183130&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Layton, Irving. Collected Poems. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1965. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/periods-of-the-moon-poems/oclc/907399867&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Layton, Irving. Periods of the Moon. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-vol2/oclc/1156824609&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Lynch, Gerald. “Layton, Irving (1912-)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. Eugene Benson and L.W. Conolly, (eds). London: Routledge, 1994. 2 Vols. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.concordia.ca/content/dam/concordia/offices/archives/docs/postgrad/Postgrad-1967-Spring.pdf\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. Post-Grad. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, Spring 1967, page 13. \"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=O5UtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4p8FAAAAIBAJ&pg=3951,6182119&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry &hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Series Coming Up At University”. Montreal; The Gazette. 31 December 1966, page 39. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548809187328,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0031_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0031_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Irving Layton Tape Box - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0031_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0031_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Irving Layton Tape Box - Front\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0031_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0031_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Irving Layton Tape Box - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/irving_layton_i086-11-031.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"irving_layton_i086-11-031.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:23:43\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"200.9 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Howard Fink\\n00:00:00\\n...Irving Layton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1673289] to this stage again tonight, this time to read his poetry. The last time he was up here was to introduce Robert Creeley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q918620], and what was said then clearly explained the close relations between Mr. Layton and the Black Mountain Group [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2905420] in the 50's, so I won't go into that again, but I'll only add that Mr. Layton was a member of the editorial board of Black Mountain Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2905420] from 1955 on. Of course he's been publishing poetry since the 40's and was associated during those years with the First Statement Press, which became the Northern Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15757902] in 1949, and all this time studying at McGill University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q201492] where he received the M.A. in Political Science and Economics in 1946. It's impossible to list all of his appearances in periodicals and little magazines, and I'll mention only a few of his two dozen or so volumes of poetry, anyway that's what it seemed like to me when I looked at that page in the new one. A Red Carpet for the Sun in 1959, with the well-known introduction by William Carlos Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178106] which acknowledged, American recognition of Mr. Layton's reputation. A Red Carpet, like all of Mr. Layton's subsequent books was published by McClelland and Stewart [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6800322]. Then, a book of short stories and poems, The Swinging Flesh, which came out in 1961, Balls for a One-armed Juggler in 1963, The Laughing Rooster in 1964, Collected Poems in 1965 and his latest work, just published this winter, Periods of the Moon. And I should say the ones that I have mentioned are the ones which are still in stock and able to be bought. Among Mr. Layton's other frenetic activities, poetry readings in Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16], United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30], Germany [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q183] and elsewhere, television appearances, controversial ones and so on, he finds time to communicate with students as well as Poet in Residence of this university [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q326342]. I'd like to present Mr. Irving Layton.\\n\\nAudience\\n00:02:21\\nApplause.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:02:30\\nThank you Howard, for your kind introduction. I'm glad that you did not introduce me as a letter writer. I'm very glad to see so large a turn out this evening. I am very heartened by it, very moved, and I'm very glad to see so many of my friends and former students in the audience. I like beginning my reading with a poem \\\"There Are No Signs\\\" because if any one poem expresses what I try to say, and all the poems and stories that I have written, is that modern man, pretty well, has to find out where he is going, by just going. Now the old sign posts are down, and that he must make his sign posts as he goes along.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:04:00\\nReads \\\"There Are No Signs\\\" [published as “There Were No Signs in Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:04:51\\n\\\"The Swimmer\\\", my symbol for the poet, condemned to live in two realms, and happy to live in neither of them. The realm of actuality and the realm of the imagination. Here I compare the poet to the swimmer.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:05:15\\nReads \\\"The Swimmer\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:06:38\\nSeveral years ago I taught at the Jewish Library, one of my students was a Mrs. Fornheim, who had lived in Vienna [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1741], and left Vienna when that city fell to the Nazis. She went to Paris [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q90], and left Paris for Spain [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29], when the Vichy government was formed. From Spain, she went to Portugal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q45] and then came to Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340], where I taught her English. She died of cancer, this is my poem for her. \\\"Mrs. Fornheim, Refugee\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:07:19\\nReads \\\"Mrs. Fornheim, Refugee\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:08:12\\n\\\"Gothic Landscape\\\", or what it means to be a Jewish boy growing up in a hostile neighbourhood of French Canadians and Italians who are convinced that you have lately murdered Christ. And where you are entranced by the church bells every Sunday, because of the ecstatic music over the sky, over the rooftops, and yet, in that ecstatic music of the bells, a sound of menace, something alien and frightening.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:09:00\\nReads \\\"Gothic Landscape\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:10:19\\n\\\"The Black Huntsmen\\\". This was written at a time when Jewish skin was made into lampshades. Or, the song of innocence becoming the song of experience.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:10:42\\nReads \\\"The Black Huntsmen\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:12:07\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nIrving Layton\\n00:12:08\\nThis is how the fringes of a prayer shawl, a sheitel is a wig. If you are an Orthodox, Jewess as my mother was, you have to cut your hair very short and wear a wig so that you are no longer attractive so to speak, to any other man but your husband. Peculiar way of looking at it.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:12:43\\nReads \\\"Archetypes\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n\\nIrving Layton\\n00:13:38\\nReads \\\"Soleil de Noces\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:14:15\\n\\\"De Bullion Street\\\". I don't suppose De Bullion Street has the reputation that it had when I was a boy. I suppose the present administration has cleaned up things, and anyway harlots now are more peripatetic. So this, in a sense, is an old fashioned poem.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:14:40\\nReads \\\"De Bullion Street\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:16:10\\n\\\"On My Way To School\\\" or the changes that come. I wasn't the most punctual of students, and it's a great comfort to me therefore when I was late to find a sign on a Baptist church \\\"Jesus Saves\\\". Many years, I returned and found some change had taken place and this poem celebrates the change, or records it.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:16:44\\nReads \\\"On My Way To School\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:17:20\\nReads \\\"Love the Conqueror Worm\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:18:31\\n\\\"Vexata Quaestio\\\". Western man is the product we are told, of two traditions, the Greek, and the Hebrew. The Greek, pagan, believing that all experience is worth having, and man should refuse no experience. The Hebrew believing that the proper life, salvation is to be found in obedience to God's will. The two traditions are quite contradictory and can never be reconciled. It is our unfortunate destiny to try to reconcile them. I do not think we have been successful at it because the task cannot be done, it's impossible. So I've written this poem, \\\"Vexata Quaestio\\\" and what I'm saying is that each and every one of us in the West is a sort of compromise between these two traditions. Here I use the tree, a tall tree, as a symbol for the Hebraic, the Maccabean and the sun becomes a symbol for the pagan, and you'll see what happens to both the tree and the sun.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:20:11\\nReads \\\"Vexata Quaestio\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:21:19\\n\\\"Cemetery in August\\\". Only humans of course are aware of death, and even in August, when you feel the flush and thrill and intensity of life, you are aware of the autumn and the winter and when you are in a cemetery, the macabre juxtaposition of life and death becomes even more intense. So I wrote this poem, \\\"Cemetery in August\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:21:54\\nReads \\\"Cemetery in August\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:24:20\\n\\\"To the Girls of my Graduating Class\\\". This was a graduating class, not at Sir George Williams, but my high school I taught several years ago. And I was very fortunate one year in having six very, very lovely, nubile adolescents, very attractive, and very, very well aware of precisely where attractions lay [audience laughter]. And very often when I was in the middle of a serious lecture in history, one of them would make some provocative gesture that would drive my thoughts from the lecture to something far more interesting [audience laughter].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:25:15\\nReads \\\"To the Girls of my Graduating Class\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n\\nAudience\\n00:26:30\\nLaughter.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:26:33\\nAnd what you see when you are in the tavern, the kind of dreams you have about pleasure and about the strange, the strange dance that all of us lead. And this very queer life and journey of ours. And I call this \\\"Bacchanal\\\", and it's a rather unusual Bacchanal, because it's a rather sad one, or shall I say a prayerful one.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:27:10\\nReads \\\"Bacchanal\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:28:18\\nThis one is for my son, \\\"Maxie\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:28:24\\nReads \\\"Maxie\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:30:03\\nAnd I suppose all teachers of literature have had the experience of giving an inspired lecture on Shakespeare [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q692] or John Donne [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q140412], and finding some hand at the back waving furiously as you're getting to the home stretch and your peroration is the most resounding thing that you've ever thought about but this hand out there, very insistent, you know, and finally you stop in the middle of the peroration and you say \\\"Yes, yes what is it?\\\" and the student says, \\\"Sir, will this be on the exam?\\\" [audience laughter].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:30:57\\nReads \\\"Seven o'Clock Lecture\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:34:07\\n\\\"The Birth of Tragedy\\\". The title is taken from one of the earliest books of Nietzsche [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9358], the gods here that I speak about in the poem, are the gods of Dream and Dance, of Reason and Ecstasy, Apollo and Dionysus, Nietzsche held that tragedy came from the union of both dream and dance, intellect and impulse.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:34:44\\nReads \\\"The Birth of Tragedy\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:36:44\\nAnd I suppose no Layton reading would be quite complete without this poem, \\\"Misunderstanding\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:36:54\\nReads \\\"Misunderstanding\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:37:16\\n\\\"The Cold Green Element\\\". This is about life, death, nature, and poetry. It's really a meditation, and, I hope, a passionate meditation on art and life. Like Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213], I am very concerned with the necessary antinomies or contradictions of life. Like Yeats, I believe that great art results from the happy, the miraculous fusion of the two.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:38:04\\nReads \\\"The Cold Green Element\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:40:20\\n\\\"The Improved Binoculars\\\", my symbol for science. It is truism to say that unless man's moral development, his capacity for sympathy, keeps space, or this development in science and technology he's in danger of blowing himself off the face of this earth. This poem is an apocalyptic poem, it is a vision of the future, such as I hope will never be realized. But in one of my more despairing moments, or one of my more savage and bitter moments, I wrote this poem, \\\"The Improved Binoculars\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:41:05\\nReads \\\"The Improved Binoculars\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:42:25\\nReads [“Orpheus” from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:44:11\\nReads \\\"Death of a Construction Worker\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:45:08\\nReads “Theology” [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:45:47\\nReads “For Louise, Age 17” [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:47:14\\n\\\"Song for Naomi\\\". Naomi's my daughter. Several years ago we were out in the country, I was appalled to find that while she was by the bank of the lake, I couldn't see her because the weeds and the flowers were taller than she was. If she fell into the lake, neither I nor my wife might see it. But nothing happened. Just a day before we were to pack up to leave, I noticed my daughter down by the lake, and this time, her dear little head was peeping just above the weeds and the flowers and this gave me the idea for this poem, which I wrote, while of course my wife did the packing.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:48:12\\nReads \\\"Song for Naomi\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:49:47\\nHere's a rather erotic poem, called \\\"Gathering of Poets\\\", to be taken of course with a grain of salt.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:49:59\\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:50:00\\n...to be taken, of course, with a grain of salt. Just a short thing.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:50:08\\nReads \\\"Gathering of Poets\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:50:40\\nReads \\\"The Bull Calf\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:53:19\\nAnd here's a lighter poem called \\\"Bargain\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:53:22\\nReads \\\"Bargain\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n\\nAudience\\n00:53:46\\nLaughter.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:53:58\\nThis next poem is for my mother, who died at the age of 89. She was a very remarkable woman, I'd like to tell you a great deal about her, she certainly merits it, she was a most remarkable character with a tremendous joie-de-vivre and a wonderful gift of vituperation, which it is said I have inherited [audience laughter]. Certainly I learned the cadence of poetry from my mother's cursing. My mother would start cursing as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning and wouldn't stop cursing until I closed them at night when I went to bed. But the cadence was what interested me [audience laughter] and I didn't pay any attention to words. Occasionally I would get the drift, of course, of what the curses were intended to say, and I must say it did me a wonderful lot of good because later on when I got knocked my critics and so on, it was like so much water off a duck's back after my mother's cursing. Nothing the critics say could possibly make any impression upon me whatsoever [audience laughter]. She was extremely vain of her black eyebrows. When she was 85, I was taking her somewhere and we stopped for a red light. I noticed a very lovely girl standing on the curb, and of course, I looked very intently at her. My mother caught my intent gaze and said, sighing, \\\"Yes, she's very beautiful, but has she got my black eyebrows?\\\" [audience laughter]. She wore earrings that were made of old Romanian coins, she wore an amber necklace, which I remember playing with when I was a child. But it was her immense vitality and joie-de-vivre, coupled with an immense discontent that always fascinated me about my mother. She was a very Orthodox woman, reverencing God, but often giving me the impression that she might have made a much better job of creation than God himself. So this is my tribute to my very, very remarkable mother.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:56:56\\nReads \\\"Keine Lazarovitch, 1870-1959\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:59:16\\nReads \\\"The Well-Wrought Urn\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:59:57\\nSome time ago, I went down to the church at Notre Dame, and you know, you have halos lighting up over the head of your favourite saint, or the Virgin Mary, if you drop the requisite number of coins. There's nobody else in that vast gloomy church, except another man and myself, and he went over to the little machine and he dropped some coins, and he waited for the halo to light up and it didn't. And that nettled him a great deal, and he waited, and it still didn't light up so he gave the machine a kick, nothing happened. But he said something and I went home and I wrote this poem.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:01:01\\nReads \\\"This Machine Age\\\" [from Collected Poems; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:02:09\\nThis next poem of mine is also based on an actual experience, I'm sure that most of you have heard of Djilas [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q153909], the very courageous Yugoslav writer who's imprisoned by his erstwhile comrade and companion in arms, Tito. He's imprisoned for writing and publishing outside of the country, Conversations with Stalin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5166446]. That was several years ago, he's just been released. Well I thought a brave man like that deserves some kind of support, especially from and by writers, and so I decided to go up to Ottawa [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1930] and demonstrate in front of the Yugoslav Embassy. I took my wife with me, and one or two of the local poets, we made some signs and we drove up to Ottawa. We got out of the car, and the sign read, of course, \\\"Free Djilas\\\", and I was amazed and delighted to find that a considerable crowd gathered around me and the sign. Until I realized just what was happening. And so I wrote this poem, called \\\"Free Djilas\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:03:31\\nReads \\\"Free Djilas\\\" [from Collected Poems; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:04:29\\nThis one, in a more serious vein, \\\"The Predator\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:04:36\\nReads \\\"The Predator\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n\\nIrving Layton\\n01:06:41\\nReads \\\"Plaza de Toros\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:09:13\\nReads \\\"At the Alhambra\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:10:20\\nReads \\\"For My Green Old Age\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:11:44\\nNow I want to read a few poems from my most recent book, Periods of the Moon. \\\"Castles on the Rhine\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:12:01\\nReads \\\"Castles on the Rhine\\\" [published as “Rhine Boat Trip in Periods of the Moon].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:12:54\\nReads \\\"Mutability\\\" from Periods of the Moon.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:14:19\\nReads \\\"Time's Velvet Tongue\\\" from Periods of the Moon.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:15:20\\nReads \\\"Gratitude\\\" from Periods of the Moon.\\n\\nAudience\\n01:16:00\\nLaughter \\n\\nIrving Layton\\n01:16:04\\nMy contribution to the centennial year, “Confederation Ode”.\\n\\nIrving Layton\\n01:16:10\\nReads \\\"Confederation Ode\\\" from Periods of the Moon [audience laughter throughout].\\n\\nAudience\\n01:17:23\\nLaughter and Applause.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:17:34\\nReads \\\"The Beautiful Unknown Girl\\\" from Periods of the Moon.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:18:55\\nAnd this one, \\\"For Musia's Grandchildren\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:19:09\\nReads \\\"For Musia's Grandchildren\\\" from Periods of the Moon.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:20:59\\nReads \\\"Look Homeward, Angel\\\" from Periods of the Moon.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:21:45\\nAnd this last one, \\\"Family Portrait\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:21:54\\nReads \\\"Family Portrait\\\" [from Collected Poems; audience laughter throughout].\\n\\nAudience\\n01:22:59\\nLaughter and Applause.\\n \\nEND\\n01:23:43\\n\",\"notes\":\"Irving Layton reads from Collected Poems (McClelland & Stewart, 1965) and Periods of the Moon (McClelland &Stewart, 1967). \\n\\nI086-11-031.1\\n00:00- Howard Fink introduces Irving Layton [INDEX: Layton introduced Robert Creeley in earlier reading, Black Mountain Poetry Group in 1950’s, Board of Black Mountain      \\tReview in 1955 onwards, First Statement Press- became Northern Review in 1949,  A    red carpet for the sun (1959) with intro by William Carlos Williams, published by       \\tMcClelland and Stewart, The swinging flesh,  Balls for a one-armed juggler (1963),        \\tLaughing Rooster (1964), Collected Poems (1965), Periods of the Moon (1967),    \\tcontroversial T.V. appearances, Poet in Residence at Sir George University 1967]\\n02:30- Irving Layton introduces “There Are No Signs”\\n04:00- Reads “There Are No Signs”\\n04:51- Introduces “The Swimmer” [INDEX: Poet as swimmer symbol; Howard Fink List “The Summer”.]\\n05:15- Reads “The Swimmer”\\n06:38- Introduces “Mrs. Fornheim, Refugee” [INDEX: Jewish Library: teaching English, Mrs. Fornheim: an European refugee from Nazis]\\n07:19- Reads “Mrs. Fornheim, Refugee”\\n08:12- Introduces “Gothic Landscape” [INDEX: Jewish boy living in Christian and Catholic neighborhoods]\\n09:00- Reads “Gothic Landscape”\\n10:19- Introduces “The Black Huntsman”\\n10:40- Reads “The Black Huntsman”\\n12:08- Introduces “Archetypes” [INDEX: Orthodox Judaism]\\n12:43- Reads “Archetypes”\\n13:38- Reads “Soleil de Nos”\\n14:15- Introduces “De Bullion Street”\\n14:40- Reads “De Bullion Street”\\n16:10- Introduces “On My Way To School”\\n16:44- Reads “On My Way To School”\\n17:20- Reads “Love the Conqueror Worm”\\n18:31- Introduces “Exata Christio” [INDEX: Western man: Greek vs. Hebraic Cultures]\\n20:11- Reads “Exata Christio”\\n21:19- Introduces “Cemetery in August”\\n21:54- Reads “Cemetery in August”\\n24:20- Introduces “To The Girls of My Graduating Class”\\n25:15- Reads “To The Girls of My Graduating Class”\\n26:33- Introduces “Bacchanal”\\n27:10- Reads “Bacchanal”\\n28:18- Introduces “Maxie” [INDEX: poem for his son]\\n28:24- Reads “Maxie”\\n30:03- Introduces “Seven O’Clock Lecture”\\n30:57- Reads “Seven O’Clock Lecture”\\n34:07- Introduces “Birth of a Tragedy” [INDEX: Nietzsche]\\n34:44- Reads “Birth of a Tragedy”\\n36:44- Introduces “Misunderstanding”\\n36:54- Reads “Misunderstanding”\\n37:16- Introduces “A Cold Green Element” [INDEX: William Butler Yeats]\\n38:04- Reads “A Cold Green Element”\\n40:20- Introduces “The Improved Binoculars” [INDEX: dangers of science and technology]\\n41:05- Reads “The Improved Binoculars”\\n42:25- Reads first line “Poets of a distant time...”\\n44:11- Reads “Death of a Construction Worker”\\n45:08- Reads “Theology”\\n45:47- Reads “For Louise, Age 17”\\n47:14- Introduces “Song for Naomi”\\n48:12- Reads “Song for Naomi” [INDEX: Poem for Naomi, daughter]\\n49:47- Begins to introduce “Gathering of Poets”\\n49:59.53- END OF RECORDING\\n   \\nHoward Fink List of poems:\\n18/03/67\\nmono, 2 tracks, speed 3 3/4 one one 5” reel, lasting 1 hr 35 min\\n \\n1.  “There Are No Signs”\\n2.  “The Summer”\\n3.  “Mrs. Fornheim, the Refugee”\\n4.  “Gothic Landscape”\\n5.  “The Black Huntsman”\\n6.  “Archetypes”\\n7.  “Soleil de Nos”\\n8.  “DeBullion Street”\\n9.  “On My Way To School”\\n10. “Love the Conquerer Worm”\\n11. “Exata Christio”\\n12. “Cemetary in August”\\n13. “To the Girls (gauls) of My Graduating Class”\\n14. “Bachnal”\\n15. “Maxie”\\n16. “Seven O’clock Lecture”\\n17. “The Birth Of Tragedy”\\n18. “Misunderstanding”\\n19. “The Cold Green Element”\\n20. “The Improved Binoculars”\\n21. first line “Poets of a distant time...”\\n22. “Death of a Construction Worker”\\n23. first line “She came to us...”\\n24. “Song for Naomi”\\n25. “Gathering of Poets”\\n\\nI086-11-031.2\\n00:00- Irving Layton introduces “Gathering of Poets”\\n00:08- Reads “Gathering of Poets”\\n00:40- Reads “The Bull Calf”\\n03:20- Reads “Bargain”\\n03:58- Introduces “Keine Lazarovitch, 1870-1959” [INDEX: Layton’s mother, Keine \\tLazarovitch]\\n06:57- Reads “Keine Lazarovitch, 1870-1959”\\n09:15- Reads “The Wall Watt Urn”\\n09:56- Introduces “This Machine Age”\\n11:01- Reads “This Machine Age”\\n12:09- Introduces “Free Djilas” [INDEX: Milovan Djilas Conversations with Stalin, Tito]\\n13:31- Reads “Free Djilas”\\n14:29- Reads “The Predator”\\n14:36- Reads “Plaza de Toros” [Plaza de Toros in Madrid]\\n19:14- Reads “At The Alhambra”\\n20:20- Reads “For My Green Old Age”\\n21:44- Reads “Castles on the Rhine”, following poems are from Periods of the Moon\\n22:54- Reads “Mutability” [INDEX: The Rhine]\\n24:20- Reads “Time’s Velvet Tongue”\\n25:02- Reads “Gratitude”\\n26:02- Reads “Confederation Ode” [INDEX: Canada’s Centennial Year, Confederation Ode]\\n27:35- Reads “The Beautiful Unknown Girl”\\n28:55- Reads “For Musia’s Grandchildren”\\n31:00- Reads “Look Homeward, Angel”\\n31:45- Reads “Family Portrait”\\n33:43.03- END OF RECORDING\\n\\nHoward Fink list of poems:\\n26.  “The Bull Calf”\\n27.  “Bargain”\\n28.  “Kana (sp??) Laserovich” (Layton’s mom)--Keine Lazarovitch\\n29.  “The Will Watt Van”\\n30.  “This Machine Age”\\n31.  “Free Gilas”\\n32.  “The Predator”\\n33.  “Plaza de Toro’s”\\n34.  first line “I sat where...”\\n35.  “For My Green Old Age”\\nThe following poems are from Layton’s book Periods of the Moon:\\n36.  “Castles On the Rine”\\n37.  “Meutability”\\n38.  “Times Velvet Tongue”\\n39.  “Gratitude”\\n40.  “Confederation Ode”\\n41.  “The Beautiful Unknowen Girl”\\n42.  “For Muska’s Grandchildren”\\n43.  “Look Homeward Angel”\\n44.  “Family Portrait”\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/irving-layton-at-sgwu-1967/\"}]"],"score":2.4686255}]